


Kidnapped

by JaneSkazki, Teegar



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Gen, Novel, Original Character Death(s), Space Pirates, Underage Drug Use, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2020-07-30 08:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 92,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20094619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneSkazki/pseuds/JaneSkazki, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teegar/pseuds/Teegar
Summary: Ensign Chekov and Mr. Scott are kidnapped by space pirates and become entangled in the search for the Treasure of the Orlan Du.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _I am fascinated by pirates._
> 
> _This is not to say I am in love with pirates. They really frighten me. I grew up in time when adults didn’t spend a lot of time looking at texts for children and asking, “Is this too violent? Is this potentially traumatizing?” Therefore I grew up having my timbers shivered by stories and movies like “Treasure Island” and “Captain Blood.” I don’t know if the appeal was the more because of the moral ambiguity of the characters or their taste in exotic headgear and waistcoats…_
> 
> _Many years later, when I was a sort-of-adult, my friend Jane and I were collaborating on “Friend in Need” – which is a wonderful novel that you can read right here on AO3. This was our first collaboration. Things were going wonderfully well._
> 
> _ Before I started writing with Jane, I had been the type of writer who outlined everything. Jane liked to just wing it. “Friend” has a very complex plot. We outlined nothing. However, despite the fact we’d never written together before, we just fell into step together perfectly and everything kept falling into place. The whole novel was essentially written in one draft. It was an absolutely exhilarating experience. One of the best writing projects I have ever been part of._
> 
> _It was also maddeningly slow. This was in the dark days before the Internet. I am American. Jane is English. Therefore we were dealing with not only snail mail lags but international snail mail lags. I’d write a segment of “Friend” and then it might be two months before it was my “turn” to write again. I was going crazy._
> 
> _To use all the excess writing energy I was generating in between “turns,” I came up with the idea for this novel. I’ve always loved the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. Why don’t we take Star Trek characters and put them in a situation that recalls elements from the novels “Kidnapped” and “Treasure Island”? That would be good, wouldn’t it? Being the impetuous, pushy American-type I am, instead of asking my friend Jane this question, I went ahead and wrote a first half of a first chapter for “Kidnapped” and instead asked, “Wanna help write this?” Being a polite British person, she didn’t say, “That’s a weird idea for a Star Trek story” or “I don’t really like Robert Louis Stevenson” or “Pirates? What are you? 12?” but instead obligingly wrote a second half to the second chapter._
> 
> _And maybe because it was a weird idea for a Star Trek story or it was difficult to write two complex narratives at once without an outline or the planets didn’t align correctly, “Kidnapped” never gelled as smoothly as a collaborative experience as “Friend” did. We were never able to get as perfectly in step as we had for “Friend.” After Chapter Five, I started to bail on “Kidnapped,” deciding it might be better to concentrate on “Friend,” but Jane persisted. I dropped back in here and there and wrote bits up until Chapter Eight when I finally bowed out completely. (When you get to Chapter Eight, see if you can spot the plot twist that made me throw in the towel…) Jane and I didn’t have an argument or anything. We wrote a lot of stories together after that. I just gave up on “Kidnapped.”_
> 
> _In fact, I didn’t just give up on it, I orphaned it. I put the first part of the first chapter on my website in a “Finish the Story” contest and offered a prize for folks to claim it. (There are a couple of old short stories floating around on the web that start the way the first chapter starts because of this.)_
> 
> _Despite my cruel abandonment of our brainchild, Jane soldiered on and eventually finished the novel. It is on her website. I will place a link to it in the notes for last chapter of this version so you can compare and contrast. _
> 
> _I have always felt guilty that I didn’t help more or finish what I had started with this project. Therefore now – some twenty-five years after I originally sent that first half of that first chapter – I got in contact with my old writing partner and asked permission to go back and do a re-write so I could retroactively collaborate on chapters 8-21. She generously agreed and has patiently dealt with my annoying questions on things she wrote two decades ago and has given feedback on my sometimes half-baked ideas for additions to our already complex plot._
> 
> _So here you have a brand new version of an old fanfic novel. As I have said, pirates and Star Trek are a pretty odd mix. It’s a bit more grim and less hopeful than usual Trek fare. In particular, if you are a fan of Mr. Scott, we’re taking liberties and exploring the limits of a darker side of his nature that is sometimes glimpsed in the series._
> 
> _Thus said, I hope you enjoy._

**Kidnapped**

by Jane Skazki and Teegar Taylor

# Chapter 1

It had begun innocently enough. The _Enterprise_ had put in for two weeks leave on Bidoah, a moderately developed planet with a Federation base. He and Mr. Scott had arranged to visit the local branch of the Cochran Institute to witness a series of experiments demonstrating a new design for an inertial damping system... Not exactly a weekend on Wrigley's Planet, Chekov had to admit, but certainly a career-enhancing experience that he'd not have been able to gain admission to without the chief engineer’s patronage.

Scott had been scheduled to go on leave a few hours earlier than Chekov, so they agreed to meet at a local bar. Looking back on it all now, the navigator knew that he should have known he was heading into trouble as soon as he stepped out of the fresh, orderly atmosphere of Bidoah's main square and into the fetid dark of that seedy den of iniquity masquerading as a legitimate place of business.

"Here, lad!" Scott hailed him, just as the ensign was preparing to take a giant step backwards. The engineer was surrounded by a table full of strangers whose appearance was forbiddingly odd, to say the least. "Come meet me mates!"

From the sound of Scott's voice and the expansiveness of his gesture, Chekov could tell the engineer had not wasted a second of his leave thus far on dry pondering of damping fields. Putting a polite smile on his face and crossing his hands behind his back, Chekov stepped forward, resigning himself to the fact that they'd probably not get to the Cochran Institute tonight.

"This is Pivel... Povel... Puve..." Scott sighed heavily as the initial vowel of Chekov's first name eluded him completely. "Ach, lad, what's your name?"

"Chekov," Chekov supplied parsimoniously, deciding he'd prefer not to have his given name bandied about by this motley crew.

In sharp contrast to the neat, streamlined fashions preferred by regular, normal, law-abiding Federation citizens, this collection of misfits was dressed in the sort of attire that was more common at an Orion port, replete with voluminous jackets and superfluous belts and straps that could easily conceal weapons.

"Aye, this is Mister Chekov." Scott didn't seem to take note of his stand-offishness as he draped an arm across the shoulders of the thin, rat-faced man beside him. "And this, this is me old mate, Bardon Goudchaux, the scurviest mother's son to ever wield a laser wrench."

"Hello, Chekov." Goudchaux's grip when he reached out to shake his hand was as thin and icy as his smile. "I see you're Starfleet, but I'm afraid I can't read your rank."

"Not much rank to read, for he's an ensign!" Scott announced with a bellow of laughter. "But one of our best, one of our best. Lad, Goudchaux and I shipped out together as engineer's mates in the Merchant Marines when we were no older than you are now. Our ship was the Lideo Low... Lodia Lie..."

"_Lydia Lee_," Goudchaux supplied.

Scott raised his glass in a solemn toast. "And a fine ship she was."

Being an excellent navigator, Chekov could already see the course evening this was charting. "Mr. Scott, I think I will meet you at the Institute, sir."

"You're not going to have a drink with us?" a tall, young, blonde woman at the end of the table asked. A metallic patch covered one of her eyes, but the other was an arresting shade of blue. "I think I'm insulted."

"Ach, we've got plenty of time to get to the experiments," Scott argued, pouring him a drink. "And I know you, Chekov. You're not one to refuse a drink... or insult a lady."

Normally this was true, even of lovely, one-eyed pirate ladies, but Chekov's instincts were screaming at him that this was not wise company for him to keep. "Thank you, but there is an opening lecture at eighteen hundred..."

"Eighteen hundred?" Goudchaux laughed, nodding to the huge Asian man sitting at his side, who rose to his full six feet and four inches of height and moved to take a position behind the ensign. "Why, it's only sixteen hundred now."

"Aye, lad, we've plenty of time for you to get back," Scott scolded. "I've got me chronimiter... chronanater... chronoo... I know what time it is."

"Mr. Chen, show young Mr. Chekov to a seat," Goudchaux directed as a grip of iron descended onto the navigator’s shoulders. "I think there's a place free next to Moray Morgain."

"If you insist," Chekov acquiesced, attempting to make it seem as though he was retaining some discretion over his destination as Mister Chen guided him firmly to a seat that materialized next to the blonde lady.

He barely had time to recover before the blonde grabbed him by the chin. She tilted his head from side to side as if inspecting him. "Such pretty eyes you’ve got, sweetheart."

The ensign carefully pulled free of her grip, cleared his throat and straightened his tunic. "Thank you, miss," he replied, diplomatically deciding against commenting on the appearance of her remaining eye.

Chekov gasped in surprise as another member of the cohort unexpectedly grabbed a handful of the navigator’s shirt front and spun him around to face him. This man’s appearance was as surprising as his manner of introduction. His features seemed humanoid — perhaps from the Sudan region of Earth or the Eastern Vasti Colonies on Mars. However his costume was distinctly Orion and his eyes were a light turquoise that was uniquely Orion. His skin, though, was a dark purplish-blue that was not typical of either Humans or Orions.

"I'm Khwaja," he growled, pulling Chekov roughly towards him.

"Pleased to meet you," the ensign lied.

"Sir!" Khwaja corrected, grabbing the navigator with both hands and shaking him roughly. "You will call me 'sir'! I am Zakaria Munfaz Khwaja, prince of Riordan, heir to the house of Zovfasta!"

Chekov smiled grimly. "Actually, Riordan is an oligarchy, not a monarchy. A member of the ruling class is called a vastafah, not a prince. I believe the Vashadons are the ruling clan family, not the Zovfasta. And you, sir, should take your hands off me... now."

Scott exploded with laughter. "He's got you there, Mister Khwaja!"

"Yes..." Goudchaux smiled as Khwaja roughly released Chekov. "You have to work very hard to fool an Academy boy like this one."

"Where's his drink?" Scott demanded, sliding him a coaster instead of a glass. "I know I poured one."

The engineer’s fingers were positioned curiously. They blocked out letters of the bar’s name so that they accidently spelled out the word for “danger” in a dialect of the Arcturian language.

"I've got it." A thin, frail, older woman with black hair threaded with grey passed a glass to the blonde woman. "We're drinking black forests, Mister Chekov."

"Black forests?" Chekov eyed the murky liquid suspiciously as the blonde held it out to him with a tantalizing smile.

"Aye, it's got vodka in it," Scott informed him enthusiastically. "I know that’ll be hard for ye ta turn down."

"_Silurian_ vodka," Chekov qualified, finally recognizing the drink from its licorice bouquet.

"With a touch of anasinsel." The blonde lady showed her teeth in a smile that was a dare. "They say you should never drink it with a stranger."

Chekov's eyes followed the drink as if hypnotized by it. "Because the distinctive smell, taste, and appearance of the drink will hide the presence of almost any drug someone would care to add to it."

"Well, there's only one cure for this situation." The pirate lady put her hand behind his head and drew him into a long, deep, and quite unexpected kiss. She winked with her one remaining eye as she released him. "Now we're not exactly strangers, are we?"

In the background, the ensign could hear Goudchaux laughing. "I didn’t think he wanted to go."

"What did you say your name was?" Chekov asked as she pressed the glass of black liquor into his unresisting hand.

The young woman picked up her own drink, downed it in a single gulp, then threw the empty glass over her shoulder. "Moray Morgain," she answered, offering a hand for him to shake as the glass shattered on the bar room floor.

Chekov took a deep breath before surrendering to the inevitable. He then downed his drink and sent his glass crashing after hers. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Morgain," he said, taking her hand and giving it a courtly kiss instead.

The table roared with laughter at this. Even the surly Khwaja guffawed and slapped him jovially on the back.

"But he's so adorable!" Morgain reached out and tousled his hair delightedly. "What d'ya say, Goudchaux? If I promise to feed him, can I keep him?"

"Wha'd ya do with the man we threw you last week?" Goudchaux returned with a leer.

As Chekov tried to brush his hair back into place, he decided that he simply must find some way to get something to eat. Just that one small drink had made him very lightheaded. "Miss Morgain..."

"Don'cha love the way he says that?" She grinned as she slipped her hand behind his neck and pulled him into another unforeseen kiss.

When she finally pulled away, Chekov opened his eyes and found something had gone terribly wrong with his vision. He couldn't quite put his finger on how or why, but nothing looked exactly as it should. Suddenly Moray Morgain, who had at first seemed a little deficient in the eye department, seemed to have developed several.

"Two... Three... Four..." The navigator counted her extra eyes aloud as they appeared. "Five... Six... Seven..."

"Eight!" Morgain exclaimed as he fell forward senselessly into her arms. "I believe that's a new record."

* * *

"Hello, stranger."

Chekov felt as though there were lead weights sitting all over his body. When the ones on his eyes grew light enough for him to open them, he found himself staring at the ceiling of a room that was definitely not his quarters on the _Enterprise_. After an instant, it also dawned on him that the blonde-haired lady with a metal patch over one eye was sitting very near. This realization brought his brain to sudden waking attention. His body, however, did not follow suit. He couldn’t immediately remember why, but it was obvious that the difficulty with his head was a pounding, throbbing, hung-over headache.

After blinking several times, his vision finally cleared. He looked down at his arms …and was then able to come to stomach-churning conclusion that he couldn't move because he was tied down. Metal manacles encircled his wrists and ankles, securing him to what looked to be a diagnostic bed in the sickbay of some strange ship.

"Remember me?" the blonde woman asked at what seemed to be an unkind volume.

He found he couldn't answer her, or voice any of the more important statements and questions crowding in his mind. Someone had taped his mouth securely shut. All he could do to vent his frustration was to make a peculiar grunting noise through his nose.

"Relax, angel eyes." She reached out and tousled his hair, laughing at his ineffectual efforts to wriggle out of her reach. "You should've run when you could, but it's too late now. Just lay back..." Chekov held his breath as she walked her fingers down the front of his body. "...and enjoy it."

"Morgain," a voice over the com system drawled, "I thought I told you to call me when he woke up."

The woman rolled her eyes and hit the button on the comm unit behind her. "He's awake, Goudchaux."

"I'll be there in a minute."

"I can hardly wait," she replied sarcastically, then turned her attention back to Chekov. "Listen to Goudchaux, angel. He never got to go to the Academy, so he's going to make your life a living hell unless you're very careful. Promise me you'll try to be a very, very good boy."

Such a promise was one of the very last things the ensign would have verbalized if he'd been able to at that moment. Instead he furiously shook her hand away from his head.

"So, my little sweetheart has a temper," she said, in the maddening sort of voice one uses to talk to a three-year-old. "I can see you're going to be lots of fun."

She leaned in so close he couldn't flinch away. "You know, after all I've been through, it would seem like I would have a lot of sympathy for someone who's going to go through what you're in for..." For a moment, he thought he saw a real touch of regret in her hard face. As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. "Funny how it doesn't work out that way."

"If you want him, Morgain," Goudchaux drawled from the doorway, "you're going to have to earn him."

"You're a slave driver, Captain," the woman complained, turning back to give Chekov an affectionate pinch on the cheek. "See you later, angel eyes."

"Questions, right?" Goudchaux entered the room flanked by the formidable Mr. Chen and the dark-haired older lady he remembered from the bar. "I bet you've got plenty of questions, right? The problem is, I really hate to be asked questions. Most people in my profession do. I suggest you avoid asking any questions the whole time you're here. In fact, don't talk at all unless we tell you to."

Chekov tried to turn his head to follow the black-haired woman as she walked to the other side of the table he was lying on, but Goudchaux turned his head roughly back to face him.

"But to be fair," he continued genially, "I'll answer some of your questions. First, yes, we have abducted you. You're no longer anywhere near Bidoah. You're on our ship. And yes, we know this is illegal and that you think your shipmates can find you and what will happen to us if we're caught, but we don't really care. So don't bring any of that up again."

The black-haired woman pressed a hypo against Chekov's arm. "There," she said, giving him a reassuring pat. "That'll take care of your headache."

It did, almost immediately, but even if he hadn't been gagged, the Russian was in no mood to thank her.

"What are we going to do with you?" Goudchaux asked for him. "Well, that depends on what the going rate for snot-nosed Starfleet ensigns is when we get to Olivan VI.”

When the ensign struggled in his bonds to protest such a suggestion, the pirate stilled him with a merciless grip on his shoulder.

“Oh, yes, my boy.” Goudchaux smiled cruelly as he leaned in. “You’ve led a charmed, pampered existence up to this point, but that’s all over. You’re just cargo now. Your options now are bad, worse, and sudden, painful death.” To emphasize the point, the pirate drew his grimy finger in a quick line across the ensign’s throat.

The ensign could not stop himself from swallowing convulsively in response, but glared his defiance at his captor.

“If you are smart lad,” his tormentor continued, “And show me that you can step lively, do as you’re bid, and hold your tongue, I’ll find a nice, fat, lazy Orion buyer for you.” The pirate laughed as the navigator renewed his ineffective struggles. “Don’t be stupid, boy,” Goudchaux scolded, pinching his cheek playfully. “It’s the best you can hope for. You have some looks, some skills… Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open… or your mouth open and your eyes shut — as the circumstances demand — and you can write your own ticket. In fifteen years, you could be the captain of your own vessel… or in fifteen days, you can be a dead whore. It all depends on your luck and what you make of it.”

If the Russian had not been firmly gagged, he would have spat in the pirate’s face.

“On the other hand, if you annoy me,” Goudchaux threatened, twisting his cheek between his fingers. “I will sell you to the Klingons. Where we’re going, there's always a Klingon buyer who'll take little lost Academy boys like you off our hands for a good price. The Klingons pay top dollar. Either they think they'll have a use for the measly scraps of information they can sweat out of you or they just want someone to practice their interrogation techniques on. You'll probably never know the difference... because they’re going to kill you, my boy. That’s the slow, painful death option I was speaking of. Just to be crystal clear."

The ensign would have frowned at this attempt at humor if his face were allowed a bit more mobility.

"What will we do with you in the meantime?" Goudchaux continued casually. "We could let you just lay here or lock you up, but on this ship everybody works. Esme, who I don't think you've been introduced to yet, takes care of our medical needs. Mister Chen is in charge of weapons. Your friend Moray Morgain is our pilot. Khwaja sees to the sensors and I..." Goudchaux smiled. "I am the humble captain of this vessel. While you were sleeping, we spent some time thinking about what role you should fulfil in our little family. I mean, we must put a former Starfleet officer to good use, right? So we decided that you'll serve as our cabin boy serve our meals, polish our boots, generally keep things tidy. All that Academy training should have you well prepared to take orders and kiss ass, shouldn't it?"

Goudchaux laughed at the way Chekov's eyes narrowed at this.

"Oh, you'll do it," he assured his captive confidently. "You'll do anything we say. I see you've noticed the lovely jewelry we've given you." His captor lightly tapped the metal cuff around Chekov's wrist. "This is to keep you out of trouble while you're adjusting to the idea of cooperating with us. They will sound an alarm any time you come in contact with anything or anyone you're not supposed to touch, or any place you're not supposed to be. As you've probably noticed, they can also be magnetized so that you can be fastened to whatever metal surface you may be near. And as you can see, this ship has no shortage of exposed metal surfaces."

Looking around, Chekov decided that the pirate ship must be a reconditioned Gundalian vessel of some sort, probably a scout. They were long on speed but short on amenities.

Goudchaux nodded to Esme, who peeled the adhesive off Chekov's mouth.

"What have you done with Mister Scott?" Chekov demanded immediately, although it felt like part of his lips had come off as well.

The gag was unceremoniously re-applied.

"You asked a question." Goudchaux shook his head and clicked his tongue. "I told you not to ask questions. This irritates me. This makes me feel like you're not listening to me. It was a good question, though. Very pertinent, very timely. It gives me an opportunity to show you what's going to happen every time you do something we tell you not to do, or irritate us in any way."

Goudchaux signaled to the woman, who activated a viewing screen on the wall beyond Chekov's feet. To his horror, but not surprise, Chekov found that the image on the screen was the _Enterprise's_ chief engineer. He seemed also to be bound to a table or bed. Only Scott's head and chest were visible. The engineer didn't seem to have regained consciousness.

"This is what we've done to my old pal," the pirate informed him remorselessly "We're not going to tell you where he is, of course. But this is what's going to happen to him every time you misbehave..."

Goudchaux took out what looked like a communicator and pressed a button. Scott's body jerked unnaturally and he cried out in pain.

"Does that make things a little clearer?" Goudchaux asked with a smile.

Chekov's eyes were still glued to the screen. He couldn't believe that any of this was actually happening.

"That's another thing you're going to have to learn," Goudchaux informed him. "When I ask you a question, you answer and you answer immediately. For now you can nod. Do you understand?"

Chekov's head remained stubbornly motionless.

The shock to Mister Scott's body seemed to be more intense this time and his scream louder.

"Just good old electricity, really," Goudchaux explained heartlessly. "But the old boy's system can only take so much, you know. Do you understand?"

Chekov closed his eyes and nodded.

"Good." The adhesive was once more ripped from Chekov's lips. Goudchaux smiled in a cruel parody of compassion. "I bet that hurts, doesn't it?"

Not wishing to take the chance that the last was only a rhetorical question, Chekov nodded again.

"Out loud, please."

Not being able to bear looking at this vile creature or the sight of Mister Scott heaving agonized breaths, Chekov looked at the ceiling. "Yes."

"Yes, Captain," Goudchaux corrected.

Chekov drew in a deep breath. When he finally turned his head and made eye contact with Goudchaux, the pirate's finger made contact with that particular button.

"Yes, Captain!" Chekov shouted over Mister Scott's cries.

"I think you do understand now." Goudchaux smiled with satisfaction. "And you're going to do everything we say, aren't you?"

Chekov's eyes squeezed closed on the bitter pain of defeat. "Yes, Captain."

"I know you will." Goudchaux motioned to his henchman. "Mister Chen, show our new cabin boy to his quarters."


	2. Chapter 2

Chekov sighed in irritation as the rotating head of the floor polishing unit he’d improvised out of some J12 tubing ground against yet another obstruction. Shutting off the suction, he knelt and gingerly tapped a fingernail on the edge of the bit of metal stuck between the deck plating to test if the sensors embedded in his manacles were going to punish him for picking it up. When they registered no objection, the navigator pried what turned out to be a mislaid conduction chip from the grilling and stuck it in one of his pockets.

The only positive thing one could say for the grimy civilian garb the pirates had issued him to replace the uniform they’d confiscated was that the garments were amply equipped with pockets…

The ensign sighed again as he reactivated his make-shift cleaning device. It was very difficult under current circumstances to maintain a positive, constructive attitude.

There was, however, certainly enough to keep one busy. To Chekov’s Starfleet trained eye, the state of the pirate’s vessel was a perfect horror. He had, at first, been somewhat surprised that the pirates had opted to convert an enemy combatant like himself into a cabin boy who would have the run of their vessel. However, once he’d seen the ship, he understood. Apparently, they stayed so busy with their thievery and bickering that no one of them had the time to take care of basic ship’s maintenance. Failing lighting units flickered overhead in almost every passageway. Equipment that had not been stowed properly cluttered every surface. The decks were sticky from spills and broken bottles littered the galley. 

Chekov rolled his eyes as he once more had to deactivate his polisher to retrieve a discarded utensil and toss it in the bin on the table. Pigs would blush to claim this ship as a sty.

The navigator thought about the chip in his pocket as he straightened and reactivated the polisher. Just a bit of junk, really. But collect a few more specific bits of junk and he could construct an adinotronic transceiver just using the rudimentary toolset they were allowing him to repair the lighting fixtures. With that, he could hack into the pirates’ main operating system and cause all sorts of mischief.

Chekov sighed and shook his head at his own unwarranted optimism as he ran the polisher under the table. A hack of any consequence would require unsupervised bridge access — which seemed unlikely. Even finding parts and assembling a transceiver was a long-term strategy that he was not sure he and Mr. Scott had time for. From the feel and sound of the vessel under his feet, he estimated they were traveling at a low warp. Bidoah was at the edge of the territory claimed by the Orions… They had days, weeks at the most…

“SHUT OFF THAT DAMNED NOISE!!!”

Without bothering to turn and see who was screaming at him, Chekov deactivated the polisher, picked up his bin of discarded utensils, and exited towards the galley.

Something wet hit him in the back of the head.

“COFFEE!”

Gritting his teeth, he knelt and picked up the wet cleaning rag Khwaja had thrown at him. “I will have it for you in a moment.”

“I want some too, doll,” Moray Morgain called after him sweetly.

“Yes, miss,” Chekov muttered in reply, taking refuge in stiff formality.

“Oh, well, isn’t this just niiiiiice?” The pirate lady laughed derisively as she pirouetted into her seat. “Look at how everything sparkles! Just like being on a luxury liner, isn’t it, Khwaja? By dinner, we’re all gonna have little monogrammed napkins next to our plates!”

The key, the Russian reminded himself sternly, as he brought a carafe and two cups on a tray from the galley, was to remain silent and ignore their jibes. His experience with the other crewmembers this morning had shown him that it didn’t take the pirates long to fall to bickering with each other or silent brooding. If he gave them nothing to kick against, they would soon forget his presence entirely.

Morgain made a detached attitude difficult to maintain by draping an arm around his waist as he bent to serve her coffee. “Goudchaux’s got you real scared,” she stage-whispered to him in a falsely consoling tone. “Don’t he, baby?”

“You insult our little soldier.” Khwaja laughed as Chekov extricated himself as smoothly as possible. “He’s not scared at all. This…” A wave of the pirate’s hand encompassed all the ensign’s improvements to the appearance and sanitary standards of the dining area. “This doesn’t show how we frighten him. This shows how much we disgust him.”

The pirate lady turned to the navigator, her one eye narrowing. “Really?”

Seeing that the conversation was taking an unfortunate turn, Chekov set his tray down at the head of the table and poured Khwaja’s cup there instead of getting any closer to either of the pirates.

“All that Academy training to make you into a leader,” the pirate mocked as the ensign slid his coffee to him on the tray. “And all it’s done is make you into a perfect little slave for us. We don’t even have to give you orders. You’ll just keep scurrying around behind us keeping everything ship-shape to show us how much cleaner and better you are than us.”

Morgain caught Chekov’s manacled wrist as he tried to place the coffee carafe on the table between them. “Is that how it is, sweetheart? Does our dirt disgust you?”

“No one clears trash or even cleans the filters in the food processing units,” the ensign blurted out angrily. Although he knew it would be better to be silent, the insults to his pride finally overcame his discretion. “I am surprised you filthy _kulaks_ haven’t died of tetanus or killed each other with food poisoning.”

“Oh, look…” Khwaja’s eerie turquoise eyes glittered maliciously as he held up his cup at shoulder level and slowly tipped it forward. “I’ve spilled my coffee.”

Chekov clenched his teeth as the brown liquid splattered onto the freshly scrubbed deck. Knowing that his actions had consequences not only for himself, but for Mr. Scott as well, he forced himself to draw in a deep breath. “I will…” he began, turning towards the galley and keeping his voice even with some difficulty, “…clean that up for you right away.”

"...with your tongue."

Chekov's stomach turned over. “What?”

Khwaja gave him a pearly smile. “If your hearing is bad, I’m sure your Mr. Scott can improve it.”

The ensign’s cheeks began to burn with a combination of frustration and embarrassment as he realized the position in which the pirate intended to place him and what little hope he had of preventing him from doing so. Biting his lip, he looked to Moray Morgain in desperate hope of support.

The pirate lady only smiled and propped her chin in one hand as if she were looking forward to the show. “Jump to it, honey,” she advised, letting one finger of the other hand hover threateningly over a com panel built into the table. “Goudchaux will be cranky if we call him right now.”

Swallowing a thousand curses and swearing to make this be a lesson to himself to never get caught out so completely by these unprincipled savages ever again, the ensign grimly marched to the other side of the table and got down on his knees. With the pirates’ scornful laughter burning in his ears, he lowered himself to the deck and slowly began to lap at the puddle of coffee.

It was a surprisingly difficult process. And even if he hadn't just washed the floor to a standard that McCoy would have been more than content with in his operating theatre, being on the decking did nothing for the taste of the coffee...

"I thought we had a Starfleet ensign,” Mogain was giggling, “but, look. We’ve got a sweet little kitty.”

“Don’t miss a drop, kitty,” Khwaja warned, playfully shoving him with a boot-tip. “Not so much as a single drop.”

Silently vowing horrible revenge on them both for this humiliation, the ensign kept his focus on methodically cleaning the centimeters of deck below him. There seemed to be nothing to be gained by hurrying.

After a few moments, though, Khwaja seemed to have tired of the game, grabbed a handful of the navigator’s hair, and pulled him up sharply.

“That’s good enough for this ship,” the pirate informed him with a sneer. “You’re dismissed.”

Before Chekov could rise to his heels, though, there was a blue-purple hand at his throat.

“Thank me!” Khwaja demanded dangerously.

The Russian coughed instead of complying, although if less abused, his mouth and throat might have brought forth a curse instead of the requested expression of gratitude.

“Don’t be so mean to our little kitty,” Morgain scolded, peeling her shipmate’s fingers from the ensign’s neck. “Look, I got it some milk.”

Turning to watch the pirate lady pour the cool white liquid into a metal saucer, Chekov somehow got the distinct impression that this development was not going to signal an improvement in his circumstances.

“Feed it and you’ll never get rid of it, Moray," Khwaja warned sardonically.

"That's an idea. I came in here and the animal was sitting up at the table like a sentient being. Find him a couple of old saucers and he can eat in the corner."Morgain pushed a chair away from the table and sat down with the bowl in her lap. "Poor thirsty kitty. Come here, kitty."

Chekov tried to swallow, but his throat muscles had gone into a sort of rictus.

The pirate lady narrowed her eyes as a warning and beckoned. “Now, kitty-kitty.”

The ensign sighed as he complied. It did seem prudent to put some distance between himself and the mercurial Khwaja.

"May I ask a question?" he asked, his voice coming out as a dry croak.

"Pardon?"

"May I ask a question, please?"

"Of course you may, pet. Since you ask so nicely."

Chekov glanced at Khwaja who was now occupied pouring himself a cup of coffee. "If I do everything you want me to do, will Goudchaux still find an excuse to torture Mr. Scott?"

Moray dipped her fingers idly into the milk. "Whatever you do, little kitten, some nasty boy is going to find a reason to make you cry. Now come here and open wide..."

Moray Morgain, Chekov knew as he obediently knelt beside her chair and allowed her to run her moistened fingers over his much abused tongue, was going to be every bit as much of a problem as the inflammable Mister Khwaja. They were the ones who were acting like felines — bored cats with a helpless little mouse to sharpen their claws on. While the best he could do was to minimize the agony Khwaja could inflict on him to a manageable level, perhaps Morgain's interest in him could be turned to his advantage. Perhaps, he thought, looking into her one blue eye, it wouldn't be a bad thing to have an ally among these pirates.

"Khwaja, Moray, I need you on the bridge." Goudchaux ordered as he entered. He paused to take in the sight of Moray, the dish of milk and Chekov on his knees with her fingers in his mouth.

Morgain rolled her one good eye as she put the bowl down on the table. "Just when I was starting to have fun..." she complained as she exited, wiping her fingers on her black vest.

"Bye-bye, little kitty," Khwaja taunted in parting.

Goudchaux remained in the doorway surveying the room as his crew passed him.

Chekov rose self-consciously and placed the saucer of milk and the un-drunk portion of Khwaja's coffee into a disposal unit in the wall. While the pirate made a slow circle of the mess room, Chekov used the bottom of his shirt to wipe away the faint circles of moisture left by both on the otherwise spotless tabletop. He then stepped back and clasping his hands behind his back assumed the same position he would have if his work was being inspected by a superior. If this filthy cossack of a pirate wanted to be treated like an officer, then that — for now — was exactly what he was going to get from his captive.

He could see the pirate smile. "Well, now. I was going to come and find fault, but I've never seen the galley look so very shipshape. And you make good coffee. You weren't in the Catering Corps by any chance? Or the Domestic Science Division?"

"No, Captain," he answered evenly, his experience with Morgain and Khwaja having amply steeled him to endure such insults to his training.

"No, of course not. You've just decided that it isn't worth fighting over a few domestic chores. We’ll see where your breaking point is soon enough." Goudchaux patted Chekov on the chest familiarly and gave a little laugh. When the ensign conspicuously failed to meet his eyes, the pirate took him by the chin and forced him to meet his gaze. "Soon enough, son,” he promised with a feral smile, then patted his cheek with false avuncular cheerfulness. “What sort of an ensign are you? I'd say an engineer, but you don't look the part. There's usually something a little absent-minded about most engineers. You're a little too sharp, if you don't mind me saying so. So, what are you?"

"A navigator, sir," Chekov admitted, since this was readily verifiable information.

"A navigator?" Goudchaux considered this with his head cocked to one side as he seated himself on the table. "Why would my old friend be taking a wet-behind-the-ears navigator to an engineering bash? If you were of the opposite sex I wouldn't ask, but unless my old mate's tastes have changed radically..."

"I work as a navigator at the present, Captain," the ensign took the liberty of interrupting. "However I am required to have knowledge of all functions of the ship. I have no idea what my assignment may be in two years’ time. Inertial field damping technology has an impact on many..." He trailed off, uncertain whether Goudchaux was really interested and quite suddenly aware that the set of possible fates for one Ensign Chekov two years hence had acquired a new and unexpected cast of characters and locations in the past few hours.

"Very ambitious, aren't you, Chekov. That was your name, wasn't it? What is it? Russian?"

"Yes, sir."

"I had ambitions once. You know what sort of ship the _Lydia Lee _was? Mr. Scott wasn't being quite accurate when he called her part of the Merchant Marine — although he was right to call her beautiful — for her kind."

Chekov just stood, politely expectant.

"She was a privateer, you see. Rather like this little scout."

"I don't believe you." Chekov momentarily forgot his act and omitted any honorific.

"What, you mean my old friend hasn't entertained you with tales of his days as a freebooter? Oh, my. It's not like him to let a good yarn stay untold. Maybe I should jog his memory..." Goudchaux caught the flicker of concern on Chekov's face. "Oh, I didn't mean it like that. I just thought he would enjoy telling you himself. Well, another time, maybe." He shook his head at Chekov's still evident skepticism. "Now come here..."

Chekov took a few steps towards him, stopping just out of reach.

"All the way here."

"Yes, Captain."

Goudchaux put his hands on his shoulders and let them rest there for a moment, smiling his frightening smile all the time. Then he spun Chekov round and gave him a violent push towards the table. "Have a seat. We need to have a little conversation."

The pirate captain ungently guided the ensign to the place that Goudchaux usually reserved for himself. He then pressed the navigator’s arms down on the table’s metal surface so that the manacles on his wrists stuck fast and kicked his feet apart so that the restraints on his ankles similarly adhered to the table’s legs.

Chekov held his breath and watched warily as the pirate took a leisurely stroll around the table to find a place for himself. Through the contact of metal on metal, the ensign could feel the faint vibration of the warp drive. As Goudchaux allowed the uncomfortable silence to stretch on and on, the ensign began to pick up peaks in the strength of the vibration. One, two, three... one, two, three, four... one, two, three...

Instead of speculating on what might be coming next, Chekov chose to think about the irregularity he'd just discovered. Presumably, given his common history with Mr. Scott, Goudchaux doubled as the engineer on this trip. Chekov wondered if he knew that his engines were misphased. It was unlikely that the ship's instruments would be reading it yet. Maybe Mr. Scott... No. Goudchaux wouldn't have been stupid enough to let the Scotsman near the engines, whatever stories he was peddling Chekov about Scott's past. Perhaps the core was just playing up in sympathy, like the animals in ancient Russian fairy tales, who rallied to the aid of prisoners confined in sorcerers' dungeons.

The ensign suddenly lost the power to concentrate on the timing of the misphased engines when Goudchaux took a seat adjacent to him, pulled an ornate dagger from his jacket, grabbed the Russian’s upper arm to steady him, and then abruptly stuck the point of the weapon into the flesh just above the navigator’s elbow.

"Ah!" Chekov couldn't suppress an involuntary cry.

The dagger was pulled back.

"Did I scare you, or did that hurt?" Goudchaux asked as if he really cared.

"It hurt," Chekov admitted readily.

"You have a low pain threshold," Goudchaux scolded. "That's not an asset for an officer, is it? Imagine if I were a Klingon. You wouldn't want to be flinching at a tiny cut like that, would you?"

Chekov didn't feel compelled to answer him at this point.

Goudchaux didn't seem to notice. “You need to know who’s in control of this ship.” He seemed to be idly scratching some word down Chekov's arm with the tip of his knife. "Do you know how to spell my name?"

The ensign frowned and pulled away as much as he could — which was only about as much as a fly on flypaper would have been able to manage. “You don’t mean to…”

"Spell my name." Goudchaux emphasized his command by lightly puncturing a point to mark where his tracing had left off.

"G...O...D...S...H...A...W," Chekov guessed.

"Not even close." Goudchaux marked another point near the center of the line of scratchings that ran down his arm. "What's the matter? You gotta use the Cyrillic alphabet or something? Never mind, just hold still. I'd hate to mess up and have to start over. Now, tell me what you did on that precious ship of yours."

"Navigator," Chekov insisted, as Goudchaux returned his dagger to the original puncture he'd made and scratched deeper a curving line downward to the guideline he'd traced.

"Never worked in Science, did you?" he asked as he took his line upwards.

"Yes I have," the ensign admitted, his voice choked down to a whisper. Blood from the shallow wound was now coming to the surface as the letter G — the first letter of the pirate's long and strangely spelt name —— began to blaze forth angrily on the skin of his arm.

Chekov was unnerved not, as Goudchaux had pointed out, because what the pirate was doing was actually hurting him. This act was frightening because it was so odd and unnecessary. It revealed the bizarre and violent lengths the pirate captain would go to establish and savor the feeling of dominance over others.

"So, you can operate a tricorder — even modify its sensitivity if necessary?"

"Yes, yes," Chekov answered, thinking this was a very stupid question. Any competent Academy graduate could take a standard issue tricorder apart and reassemble it four different ways if needed.

"Do any work in mineralogy?" the pirate asked conversationally, adding decorative serifs to his initial. "For instance, would you know how to run a jewelpoint count or a Loodman's assay on tenilium?"

"Of course."

"That's good to know." Goudchaux moved his instrument to begin work on the letter O. "I certainly hope you're not lying. I hate liars. Now I want you to tell me how you're planning to escape."

Chekov blinked. "What?"

"Don't tell me you're not planning to escape." Goudchaux looked up to give him a thin, grim smile before he began on the U. "Being cooperative is step one, isn't it? You've decided that you're expendable. If you thought you were of any real value to us, you would have tried to kill yourself by now, wouldn't you? No, you think your only value now is as a potential hero. You're either waiting for or planning an opportunity to free Mr. Scott or destroy him. Perhaps you've been so impressed by our hospitality thus far that you're considering ways to destroy us all in one fell blow."

Chekov bit his lip as the pirate started to carefully cross-hatch out a letter D. In a strange way, he was getting used to this torture. The dagger Goudchaux was using was very sharp and the cuts weren't deep. They stung more after the fact than while he was carving.

"I'll be interested to see what you come up with," Goudchaux continued. "What will it be — sabotage? Mayhem? Lulling us into a false contentment has proved a little more difficult than you anticipated, hasn't it?"

The door to the mess room opened and someone with a light step entered. "Do you have to do that in here?" Chekov could tell the voice belonged to the medic they called Esme.

"I waited until everyone was through with lunch," Goudchaux answered, wiping his blade off on Chekov's tunic. "I was just thinking, and you know how I like to whittle while I think."

"If you're going to cut him up then cut him into bits I can throw away, rather than ones I have to stitch back together," the medic replied irritably.

Goudchaux laughed as if this were a good joke. "I promised him to you 'til dinner, didn't I?"

"As a worker, not a patient," the old woman complained.

"He's yours until second watch." Goudchaux reached into a pocket and did something that suddenly de-magnetized all the ensign’s manacles. He then stood and crossed to the exit. "But be careful. He's a desperate man with delusions of glory. There's nothing more dangerous."

"You don't have to tell me that," the old woman said to the door after it closed behind him.

* * *

"He means to kill me, doesn't he?" Chekov asked as the medic hissed the contents of a hypo into his arm. She'd taken him to the small sickbay and covered his wounds with a soothing layer of dermaplast.

"We all die sooner or later," the older woman replied tersely as she helped him into a clean shirt. The garment was plain and black in color. It fastened at the neck and down each shoulder, under the arms and down each side. In short, it was a garment that would be fairly easy to remove without his active assistance.

"But for me, it's going to be sooner rather than later," he pressed. His only hope he felt now was to find the weak link in Goudchaux's chain of command — someone who either had sympathy for him or reservations about Goudchaux's aims. With Esme, he'd already seen clear indications of the former and glimmers of the latter.

She was not as old as he had originally estimated her to be. The medic had a way of stooping her shoulders and holding her thin, bony hands before her that made her look rather old… and rather like a witch in a fairy tale. However, seeing her in the relatively good lighting of the ship’s small sickbay, the ensign could tell she was perhaps only in her late fifties.

The medic walked to the far end of the room and pressed the button that opened the door to a small closet. "This is the supply cabinet,” she explained with flick of one of her claw-like hands. She had a sweet voice that somehow was still the sort of voice that one might imagine a witch in a fairy tale might possess. “I don't much care how you organize it for now. Anything's going to be an improvement over this mess. Just clean everything off and put things that are the same color or look alike together."

The ensign got off the table and joined her by the closet. He surveyed what looked to be a formidable task with his hands on his hips. "It looks as though it has been a very long time since Mr. Goudchaux has procured an assistant for you."

Avoiding his eyes, the woman handed him a pair of gloves. "You'll need these."

"How many others have there been?" he asked when their hands briefly made contact over the gloves. "And what happened to them?"

"There's solvents and cleaning solutions in there somewhere," she informed him in her sweet sing-song voice, returning to her desk as if nothing had been said. "You can ask me about anything you're unsure how to dispose of, but on the whole I'd prefer it if you didn't talk."

"Why?" Chekov persisted. "Because you don't want to know me, perhaps become attached to me... like you did to them?"

She met his gaze briefly. Esme had large, luminously green eyes. Despite her stringy dyed black hair and her wrinkles, he could see that she had been beautiful once, as beautiful as Moray Morgain was now. Dropping her eyes, she nodded sharply towards the supply cabinet. "Go on, dearie. You haven't got all day."

Chekov wondered exactly how much time he did have as he slipped on the protective gloves. Although the medic's prognosis was not good, the fact that Goudchaux had questioned him about his abilities to perform certain tests did seem encouraging. They were simple tests, though. Anyone with a basic background in science could do them. Besides, he was under the impression that Khwaja was the ship's Science Officer.

Tenilium, it occurred to him as he searched the floor of the cupboard for the cleaning fluids, was a rare precious metal. It was sometimes called "blue gold". The Andorians held it to be a sacred substance. Perhaps it wasn't that Goudchaux doubted his assistant's expertise. Maybe he just wanted the assistance of someone a little more... expendable.

Chekov picked up a bottle of poison and wondered if he should kill himself. It would be better than ending up in the hands of the Klingons... if that was actually a serious threat. He could trust nothing these pirates told him.

He placed the poison back on the shelf decisively. There seemed to be plenty of time for that if he became convinced it was the proper option. They weren't doing anything in particular to prevent him from trying. In the meantime, he had to watch for an opportunity to free Mr. Scott.

Thinking of Scott made him notice a sound he'd been ignoring since he'd arrived. It was an easy sound to ignore in a sickbay. It was the sound of a monitoring device echoing the sound of a heartbeat. Chekov compared it with his own. It was very, very slow. Either the heartbeat was not human, or the human was in some sort of trance, deep sedation or suspended animation.

It was easy to guess that the heartbeat being monitored belonged to the Chief Engineer. Whatever they were doing to him, it was obvious that it would be either controlled or monitored from sickbay. What were they doing to him, though? And which could be done from here, control or monitor? There was one easy way to find out, Chekov decided, picking up a container of an unfamiliar substance.

The medic had her back turned as he approached. She was seated at a small desk intently studying the visual display on the monitor. To her left was another small screen. On it was a readout of vital signs. Chekov was barely able to glance at it though. Much more interesting was the sight that so enthralled his captor.

The image was of four connected pieces of a blue medallion that originally had been broken into five parts. Symbols were etched into the crystal surface and outlined in shimmering silver.

Once, when he'd been teasing Sulu about the helmsman's plethora of hobbies, the lieutenant had countered by claiming that any one of his many pastimes was better than Chekov's primary form of amusement which Sulu identified as the "collection of useless knowledge". At the time, Chekov had laughed, because in the course of doing research for Mr. Spock, he had come into possession of reams of information that although interesting seemed to have little practical value.

One footnote to archaeological history, however, had just become quite important to him.

The medic turned and suddenly Chekov sensed that it was vital that she not know that he'd noticed that particular screen.

"That's Mr. Scott, isn't it?" he said, pointing to the other screen which still patiently monitored someone's sluggish heartbeat.

"Go back to what you were doing," she ordered, but something in her eyes told him that she wasn't completely buying it. She'd tell Goudchaux that there was the possibility he'd seen it. And if Goudchaux had the slightest hint...

A bigger diversion was clearly called for.

"I did not know what to do with this," Chekov said, holding up the bottle for a second in order to catch her eye before he threw it at her.

The bottle was made of unbreakable plastic that bounced harmlessly off the arms she raised to shield her face. It did give him enough time to dive for the desk. Covering his actions by reaching for a laser scalpel with his left hand, he hit the button that deactivated her computer monitor with his left elbow.

The older woman was no match for him. She felt like a twig in his arms as he pressed her back tightly against his chest and held the scalpel to her neck.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the computer screen had gone safely blank as he forcibly directed the woman's attention to the lifesign monitor. "Set him free or tell me where he is, or I will cut your throat."

"Young man." The medic’s voice was raspy from lack of breath, but she wasn't even trembling. "If I do either of those I will be dead anyway."

"Well, go on and kill her if you're going to," Goudchaux's filtered voice drawled over the intercom as Chekov expected it would. His grabbing of either the scalpel or the medic would have set off a dozen alarms if the monitoring device installed in his manacles was actually present and functioned in the way the pirate had described.

Chekov tightened his grip on his hostage and put his finger on the scalpel's activation control. "I will kill her."

"You'd be doing him a favor," the medic informed him bitterly. "Wouldn't he, Goudchaux? A four-way split instead of a five-way."

There was no reply for a few moments, then a long sigh. "Slit her throat or throw down your weapon, Chekov. I'm getting bored."

For a moment, he objectively weighed the advantages of killing his hostage. If dead, she'd certainly not be able to entertain any suspicions that the ensign knew anything about the pirates' quest or inform Goudchaux of those suspicions. And if his hunch was correct, she was probably not going to live to see the end of this voyage anyway.

Reasoning a woman to death, however, was quite a different thing from pushing a button that would send destructive light through vital veins and arteries. Although a stranger with little concern for his welfare, this woman was still a fellow thinking/feeling creature, her frail, thin body warm and alive next to his.

Mr. Chen stepped through the sickbay door as soon as the scalpel hit the floor.

"So, you opted for mayhem," Goudchaux's voice was saying. "An interesting choice."

When he released her, the woman collected the scalpel and the bottle he'd thrown and replaced them, displaying no more concern than if the items had been displaced by the ship encountering a small ion storm. When Chen took the ensign's wrists and pressed them together, the bracelets clung to each other affectionately.

"You're either being stupid," the unseen Goudchaux speculated, "or very clever."

"Very stupid," Chekov informed him helpfully.

"Since you're being so entertaining, I'll let you make another decision. Either we can wake Mr. Scott, or I'll let you take the penalty for this little escapade yourself."

"I'll take it myself." Despite his earlier resolution not to spare Scott, he had the feeling that the price for his diversion was going to be somewhat high.

"Now you're back to being predictable. Hmmm..." Goudchaux's voice trailed off for a moment. "That gives me something to think about.”

“Oh, he didn’t do anything,” the medic objected irritably. “Just show him the instruments. Just give him the tour. That’s bad enough.”

The pirate captain displeasure in this insubordination could be heard clearly through his pause. “You weren’t asked.”

“It was my neck,” the older woman pointed out.

Chen nodded. “Her neck.”

“Fine, then.” Goudchaux relented impatiently. “Chen, give our noble young friend the tour."

Chekov knew that whatever they were going to do to him was probably going to be unimaginably awful, so he didn't waste time trying to imagine it as Chen placed a huge hand on his back and guided him to the door. What was worth considering as he was escorted down the small ship's corridors to whatever unspeakable fate awaited him was what he'd briefly seen on the medic's computer.

Chekov had first encountered the story of the lost treasure of the Orlan Du while doing research on Orion culture for Mister Spock. It was a fascinating tale because unlike other pirate stories from Orion's semi-mythical past, there were actual relics to support it. The Orlan Du were three brothers who were fabled to have gathered a fantastic hoard of treasures and stored it away. Finding themselves pursued, the legend had it, they made a map of the location of their treasure and the access codes to disarm the traps guarding it on a piece of kirilite. The gem was split into five sections and a piece was carried away by each of the three brothers, their pilot and their navigator. Each headed, according to the legend, to a different corner of the galaxy to await the time when they could safely reunite.

The shards held by the Orlan Du were preserved and passed down as objects of veneration in three of the great houses of Orion nobility. The fourth was missing and believed destroyed until it was found on Andor by Federation archaeologists in their early explorations of that planet. Legend had always placed the fourth shard with a now extinct Orion house that had spearheaded exploration into the Andor sector. When it surfaced, there had been a brief upsurge of interest in the Orlan Du. The four pieces were useless, however, without the fifth whose whereabouts were completely unknown. Only when the entire piece was joined would the kirilite light up with the unique brand of radiation peculiar to that stone that would allow the secret characters inside the stone to become visible.

The very interesting thing about the image of the Orlan Du medallion on the medic's screen was that the only gap in the stone was caused by the absence of one of the shards owned by the Orion brothers — a piece whose whereabouts had been known for a thousand years.

Included was an image of the never before seen fifth shard.

The possibility that this crew was on the trail of the treasure of the Orlan Du opened up a new range of possibilities for Chekov. For one thing, it was reasonable that a once great, now financially strapped house of Orion would be willing to swap a venerated but useless family heirloom for something they saw as more readily convertible to cash — like a Starfleet officer or two. Chekov was as dubious as Goudchaux about his own going price, but a man like Mister Scott had definite market value. With the engineer's experience and technological expertise the Federation might pay as high a ransom to recover him as the Klingons would to obtain him.

Goudchaux's interest in Chekov's technical abilities was also more understandable in this light. It was plausible that the pirate was beginning to consider the company of an ignorant but capable assistant on the final leg of his journey preferable to that of his less than reliable crew. Goudchaux needed his motley assemblage to get him to the treasure's location, but once there, they too became expendable.

"You're not a native speaker of Standard," Chen commented unexpectedly as they entered a lift.

Chekov blinked at him. The huge Asian had been so silent for so long that he had begun to think the man incapable of speech. "No, I'm not."

The lift doors opened and Chen led the way out and down another corridor. Chekov patiently waited for the usual comment about his accent. He wasn't about to supply it himself.

"It's a euphemism, you know," Chen said instead.

"What?"

They stopped in front of a door. "'Taking the tour'," Chen explained in a tone that was neither kind nor unkind. "It's a euphemism."

"For what?"

The door opened and looking inside, Chekov found that this pirate ship, like a proper pirate ship should, had a small, compact, but well-equipped dungeon.

Chen placed his hand on Chekov's back and guided him inside, saying in his neutral voice, "Torture."


	3. Chapter 3

"Concentrate!" Khwaja screamed at him. "You're not concentrating!"

The harder Chekov tried to concentrate on filling the man's glass, the harder his hands seemed to shake.

"Worse this time than before!" the pirate crowed, gleefully snatching the pitcher and glass away from him.

Chekov couldn't stop trembling as the contents of the glass were emptied over his head yet again. The water wasn't that cold. It just seemed that his muscles and nerves couldn't figure out how to function together properly any more.

Being given “the tour” turned out to have its roots in the medieval traditions of torture where the victim was taken to a chamber of horrors and given a brief demonstration of how a few of the various implements of pain functioned. It turned out that the ship’s medic was right. A tour was a sufficiently terrible thing to be forced to endure.

"But a low tolerance to pain like his has to be a liability," Goudchaux was saying. He and Chen were having a pleasant, though somewhat one-sided debate over the ensign's fitness as a subject for torment while they finished their meal.

"Not always," the other man replied taciturnly.

"Yes, I suppose there would be some advantage to having a minimal level of damage done before you pass out," Goudchaux said, filling in the other man's arguments. "But still it seems like the elements of fear and dread would set in sooner and the physical strain of being repeatedly revived would wear you down... Although, I'll admit, burning out quickly is the best you can hope for in some interrogation scenarios. A challenge for the interrogator, though..."

Chen shrugged non-committally.

"Stop it, Khwaja," the ship’s medic spoke up irritably. "You'll send him into cardiac arrest."

"So?"

"Come here, Chekov," Goudchaux said, coming unexpectedly to his aid.

The ensign obeyed, leaving the unwieldy pitcher with Khwaja. "Sir?" he asked between chattering teeth.

"This..." The pirate captain gestured to his plate. "...was not up to your previous standard."

That was a bit of an understatement. It was a minor miracle that he'd been able to prepare the meal sustaining only a small burn and one minor cut. The galley was a wreck and there was a lot of food on the table and the floor that had originally been intended for someone's plate. "Terribly sorry," he non-apologized, hoping they all choked.

"Not up to your previous standards at all, but under the circumstances..." The pirate lifted his shaking hand by its manacled wrist. "...I suppose we could be lenient. How long were you on the table?"

Goudchaux seemed to have quite a fondness for euphemisms today. The 'table' he was referring to was a device of Klingon origin. After being strapped to it, the victim's nervous system was bombarded with waves of Kirlon energy — exquisitely painful, but causing little actual physical deterioration.

Chekov swallowed and fixed his eyes on the opposite wall. "A very long time."

"Five seconds," Chen corrected, munching on a piece of celery like a huge cow.

"Only five seconds to achieve this." Goudchaux smiled at the ensign’s trembling hand as if it were something lovely. "Maximum efficacy and efficiency. An admirable job as always, Mr. Chen. I'm sure our young friend here will think twice before he acts so impulsively again."

The object of his attack frowned at him with professional rather than personal disapproval. "I should give him a shot," she decided, "before he breaks something."

"Don't bother," her commander replied. "He'll be fine in about half an hour or so." The pirate laughed at Chekov's look of disbelief. "That's the great thing about the table. It makes you feel like you're dying. A little while later, though, you're back on your feet and ready to start all over again."

The navigator decided, as he stood there wet and trembling uncontrollably, that he would _not_ commit suicide to nobly remove himself from this situation no matter how logical that option seemed. Somehow he was going to live long enough to make this man very sorry that they'd ever met.

"Back to the bridge," the pirate captain ordered, giving Khwaja a friendly slap on the back. As his crew rose, Goudchaux handed Chekov his empty plate. "Get this mess cleaned up and fix something for Moray Morgain to eat when she gets off duty.” He pushed the ensign’s wet bangs out of his eyes and straightened his soggy clothing as if this sort of superficial grooming could improve the navigator’s bedraggled appearance in any way. “I want you to fix her something very nice and deliver it to her quarters in about an hour. Her cabin is just a little down the corridor from here — marked 4D.” Goudchaux gave his captive’s face a rough pat. “Tell her that it's with my compliments — a special treat for a job well done."

Between the pirate captain’s lascivious smile and Khwaja's parting smirk, it didn't take a genius to figure out what sort of a special treat the pirate captain was really sending his pilot. Chekov could feel a hot blush warming his icy cheeks. "Yes, sir."

"Don't keep her waiting." Goudchaux grinned as his crew filed out past him. "And try a little harder with our meal next time. I'd hate to have to show you my nasty side."

* * *

"Come."

Moray Morgain did not walk to her cabin door to answer it, as Chekov had vainly hoped she might, thus eliminating the slim possibility that he could just hand her the tray and walk away. Instead, he had to enter.

"Your lunch," he said as the door slid shut behind him.

Her quarters were far from sumptuous. There was a desk with a computer terminal, a chair in which she was presently sitting, drinking something amber-colored from a shot glass, and a bed.

She smiled as she beckoned him closer with one finger. "Well, bring it to me."

He came forward and stiffly set the tray down on the desk.

"What did Goudchaux tell you to say?" she prompted.

"He sends this to you with his compliments — a special treat for a job well done." Overly high fanfare, Chekov thought, for the crookedly built club sandwich he'd come up with.

Moray Morgain seemed pleased though.

"You're embarrassed," she said, reaching out and touching his cheek. "How sweet. It's kind of like being on a first date, isn't it?"

Chekov took a deep breath. "Miss Morgain," he began reasonably.

"Don't take this wrong, angel," she interrupted, "But you don't look as good as you did the last time I saw you."

As Goudchaux had predicted, the trembling had worn off, but he still felt shaky. His hair and clothes were still damp from the dousing he'd received from Khwaja. The cuts on his had healed enough that they only itched occasionally and there was still a funny taste in his mouth from having licked the deck clean.

"I've had a difficult afternoon," he explained briefly.

"Want something to drink?" she asked, opening a cabinet behind her.

"No Silurian vodka."

She laughed as she poured him something green. He drank it without bothering to check for signs of the presence of any additives. In this difficult social situation, he would have considered it an act of courtesy if she had decided to drug him.

"Sit down," she said, picking up her sandwich. "You're beginning to make me nervous."

There was, of course, no place to sit but on the bed. The navigator noted as he sat that it wasn't a particularly large or notably comfortable bed. It was only a little larger than a standard bunk. The mattress was set securely inside a form made of the same materials as the walls. Two inches of metal framed the mattress from head to foot. Ample material, Chekov decided, rubbing his wrists uncomfortably, to stick to.

The pirate lady was smiling at him. "It's better than being locked in your quarters, isn't it?"

"Is that where I would be if I were not here?" Chekov asked, wondering why they'd need to have him out of the way.

"Want some more?" Morgain asked, crossing to him with the decanter.

"No, thank you." Even sitting down, she was slightly taller than him. Her nearness made him think once again of how beautiful she was. The form-fitting black clothes she wore revealed her athletically good figure to a definite advantage. However, there were limits to how far he was willing to go with this obedient servant charade. It felt as though they were rapidly approaching one such boundary.

"I must go back to the galley," he said, handing the glass back to her. "It is not completely in order..."

"Haven’t got all our napkins monogramed yet?" she asked, leaning over him to put glass and decanter on the stand next to her bed. She didn't come quite back up to sitting. Instead, she paused over his lap at the point where they were face to face. Her hand rested lightly on his thigh. "Don’t worry about it. Dinner can take care of itself tonight."

Chekov took a moment to weigh his options. They were very few and most had unpleasant consequences. Making an objective evaluation based on the facts of the situation, he leaned slightly forward and kissed her. He had to admit in all fairness that she was quite pleasant to kiss — perhaps even more pleasant to kiss than he'd remembered from the night before. One peculiar thing he almost failed to notice was that instead of putting her arms around him, she held his hands while she kissed him. It wasn't really that peculiar. In fact the reason she did it was quite apparent a moment later when she pushed him gently backwards onto the bed, kissing him and pulling his hands until there was the clink of the metal links around his wrists making contact with the metal surface surrounding the head of the bed.

"Miss Morgain..." he protested as she pulled his feet up onto the bed. He knew it would, however, be useless and even disingenuous to struggle at this point. "I assure you, this isn't necessary."

"What's the matter, sweetheart?" she asked as she secured his ankles in place. "Am I making you uncomfortable?"

"Yes. If you really wish to..."

She interrupted him with a kiss. "Good. I don't want you to get too comfortable with me."

Being brought into contact with metal again did make him notice something. The vibrations of the ship had changed. They'd dropped out of warp drive. Engines were at low power. Possibly the ship was in orbit or had pulled alongside another vessel. Possibly dinner would take care of itself tonight because the rest of the crew was going to be dining with representatives of a certain noble Orion family. "Miss Morgain..."

She pushed his head to one side and planted kisses on his cheek while her fingers unfastened his collar. "Haven't you ever had sex while you were tied up before?"

"No," Chekov answered as she rapidly undid the fastenings down the right shoulder and side of the shirt then pulled the garment aside. "I have not."

"Oh, well, I can't guarantee you'll like it..." She started kissing him on the throat and worked her way slowly down. "...at least, not at first."

* * *

Chekov glared at Moray Morgain's napkin as it lay upon the floor of the mess room. He did not gullibly bend over to pick it up as he had the last two times she 'accidentally' dropped it this morning.

"I can see," he said, carefully hooking the cloth on the toe of his boot and bringing it up to his hand, "that clearly it is too much to expect to be treated with even a minimal amount of decency."

Khwaja, Morgain's only companion for breakfast thus far, laughed around a mouthful of his meal. He for one was being greatly amused by the one-eyed pilot's game of creating opportunities to pinch or caress her little human plaything.

Instead of taking her napkin from Chekov, Morgain took his arm and pulled him close enough for her to put her arm around his waist. "What do you want, sweetheart? Just because I had sex with you, you want me to respect you?"

Chekov attempted unsuccessfully to disentangle himself. "I assure you, nothing that happened last evening would lead me to the unlikely conclusion that you have any sort of respect for me."

"Good. Because if you think I respect you — next you'll want me to trust you." Morgain used her free hand to unfasten the shoulder of her shirt. She pointed out a round whitened scar that had a twin on the back, marking what looked like the entrance and exit points of a laser beam. "You see that? That's what I got from the last man I trusted."

"Esme trusted this one," Khwaja pointed out, "and he put a scalpel to her throat yesterday."

Morgain's grip on him weakened perceptibly. "Is that true?" she asked, her one eye narrowing.

Chekov used the opportunity to free himself and pick up her empty plate.

"Well, well, well. Not quite the choirboy we pretend to be, are we?" He didn't move away fast enough to avoid the unladylike swat she aimed at his backside. "But then again, I figured that out last night."

The navigator was utilizing more force than was entirely necessary to put Miss Morgain's breakfast things into the disposal unit when the door opened.

"...hours at the most," said the first new voice he'd heard in almost two days. "Then we can complete our little transaction and I'll be on my way."

The owner of this unfamiliar voice was a smallish but strongly built man who entered at Goudchaux's side. The man looked around thirty-five years old, was definitely human, probably from Earth or one of her colonies to judge by his accent, but was dressed in the outlandish costume of an Orion retainer. A red cloak embossed with a purple and gold design based on an Orion crest was thrown over his emerald green tunic, shimmering gold sash and lividly blue trousers. The stranger wore a thin Orion style beard on his face and a green Orion hat perched on his head. Gold chains, purple beads and silver medallions decorated his costume liberally. In the midst of the grey or black-clad pirates on their grey/black ship, the stranger looked uncannily like a parrot lost in a coal pit.

"Good morning, Khwaja, Moray, my dear," he greeted the pirates cheerily. "I was just saying to your captain that between the four of us we should have the problem with my transfer coils worked out in no time at all."

The stranger followed their uneasy glances to Chekov. "I don't believe I've met this fellow."

"Don't talk to him." Khwaja shoved the ensign aside to put his plate in the disposal unit. "He's nobody."

"And he's sulking," Morgain added.

"Well, hello, Mr. Nobody." The stranger pleasantly offered him a hand to shake. "I'm not inclined to bandy my real name about either, but you can call me Stuart Brecht."

Chekov crossed his arms. One advantage to being a galley slave aboard a pirate ship was that etiquette didn't require you to shake hands with traitorous freebooters in the employ of powers frequently allied against the best interests of the Federation. "I suppose I am to address this person as 'sir' also?"

"I'll give you a refresher course on manners later." Goudchaux put an icy hand on the navigator’s shoulder and propelled him towards the kitchen. "For now, get Mister Brecht some of your very good coffee and make yourself scarce."

"So," the newcomer said, taking a seat at the table beside Morgain. "You've taken on another mouth to feed, have you, Goudchaux?"

"Just giving an eager young man an opportunity to see the galaxy," the pirate replied with a falsely amiable tone that Chekov in the next room could clearly interpret as a warning to the freebooter to drop the subject.

"Very charitable of you, I'm sure," Brecht returned agreeably. "Speaking of charity, I was thinking you might do me a favor."

Goudchaux leaned back so Chekov could place a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. "I might."

"I was thinking it might save us all a little time later if you went ahead and had Chen transfer..." Brecht eyed the ensign cautiously as he put a cup down in front of him. "...well, have him transfer your half of our bargain to my ship now."

"Not getting eager to leave, are you, Stu?" Morgain asked, putting her arm around him. "Not before you and I have had a chance to talk old times?"

"No chance of that, my sweet." Brecht affectionately tapped the plate over her missing eye. "And how far could I get with a burned out transfer coil anyway?"

"I'm not disagreeable to the idea of transferring our cargo now," Goudchaux said. "As you say, it would save time later. What would you say if I proposed we complete the entire exchange now?"

The freebooter's expression flickered. His laugh sounded hollow as his eyes darted briefly around the table. "That wouldn't be to my advantage."

"Relax, Brecht." Khwaja grinned like a jackal. "You're among friends."

Chekov felt his pulse rising as the tension in the air thickened. His mind raced to come up with a way to turn what looked to be an imminent attack on this newcomer to an advantage for him.

Brecht smiled humorlessly. "I know the piece I'm holding will complete the set for you."

Goudchaux spread his hands innocently. "Then you'll be as curious as we are to see how it looks in place."

"C'mon, Stu." Morgain gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "What could be the harm in a little sneak preview?"

Chekov watched the freebooter take a long moment to weigh his odds again. "Yeah, what's the harm?" he said with false brightness as he reached into his clothing. "Since we're all old friends."

Morgain's hand on his arm stopped him. "Well, most of us are old friends," she said, nodding towards Chekov.

Under the direction of a snap and jerk of the thumb from Goudchaux, Khwaja unceremoniously grabbed Chekov by the back of the collar and shoved him out the mess room door.

"Damn," Chekov swore softly as the door closed on what was shaping up to be a very interesting scene. It occurred to him, however, that his abrupt ejection was the first evidence he'd seen of a lack of one hundred percent planning on Goudchaux's part. Here he was, completely unchaperoned, with no other instruction than to "make himself scarce".

He looked down the corridor. It ran in a straight line for about twenty metres. There were about eight doors off it, but no other passageways branching from it. His 'quarters' were at one end, next to the miniature sick bay. He guessed there were only three or four levels to this small ship. Mr. Chen's domain was below this deck and the bridge was probably above. Checking over the mental map his experiences thus far allowed him to draw of the ship, he concluded that depressingly large areas were still marked "here be dragons".

He sighed and looked at the manacles on his wrists. If they worked as Goudchaux had said — and nothing about the incident with the ship's medic had disproved that — then his possibilities for exploration were limited. However, it occurred to him that his excursion to the lower level yesterday hadn't tripped any alarms. Perhaps he could see what else was down there.

'And if I do get caught,' he thought cheerfully as he pressed the call button for the lift, 'at least I won't have far to walk this time.'

Inside the door there were three buttons, confirming the existence of three levels. At the last minute, he decided to go up.

Same layout, same doors, but the furthermost doors on the right were open. Nothing, dammit, was labelled. There had to be damage control points, though. Even on a pirate vessel there would still be postings showing escape routes and general layouts, in case of emergencies. He smiled when he spotted one. It was striped blue and orange. From that he should have been able to determine where the ship was registered, or at least originally registered. It was probably long absent from the respectable lists of any legal port.

Chekov held his breath as he put his hand on the panel and waited for hell to break loose. Nothing. The cover lifted smoothly, revealing extinguishers, emergency oxygen, switches to bring down emergency bulkheads, protected intra-ship communications. All potentially useful items. But no plans.

Where else on this ship could he go? He closed his eyes for a moment. Although his progress so far was not exactly inspiring, it felt good to be active. The simple fact that he was doing something other than just running before the wind of the pirates' cruelty made him very happy.

A strange sensation in his right wrist caused him to open his eyes abruptly. His hand, which had been resting on the edge of the panel's opening, seemed to be moving of its own volition.

"Oh, no," he said when it stuck to the metal wall. "Oh, no, no, no!"

His frantic efforts to free himself only succeeded in bringing his other manacled wrist into contact with the wall. If only he could figure out how to de-activate those infernal things!

He was left with nothing to do but slowly beat his head against his wrists in despair until his tormentors arrived. He had almost ten minutes in which to review his complete lack of options.

The first one on the scene was Chen. Chekov guessed his identity as soon as he heard the sound of heavy footsteps travelling down the corridor. The big man stopped a few paces away. When Chekov looked up, they stared at each other silently and impassively for a moment.

"The alarms," Chen said at length. "You can't hear them, you know."

"No." Chekov shook his head and closed his eyes again. "I didn't know that."

The interrogator lapsed into his usual impenetrable silence, but then a flicker of expression crossed his face. Chen tilted his head to one side and narrowed his eyes.

This did not seem to be a good development. The pirate’s unreadable reaction seemed even less positive when Chen suddenly stepped forward and picked Chekov up, holding him so that they were nearly eye-to-eye.

“What? What?” the ensign wheezed in surprise.

“You look…” The interrogator frowned and shook his head slowly. “In this light…”

The navigator swallowed and sincerely hoped this was not going to turn into the sort of situation he was currently trying to manage with Miss Morgain.

“Do you resemble your father?” the pirate pressed abruptly.

“Yes, of course,” the Russian replied automatically, rather puzzled by this unexpected turn towards genealogical inquiry.

The interrogator grunted a half-satisfied acknowledgement and was slowly lowering him to the floor when Goudchaux arrived on the scene.

"And just what were you trying to do?" the pirate captain demanded.

Chekov smiled feebly. "Make myself scarce?"

"Scarce?" Goudchaux laughed cruelly. "You're damn near to making yourself extinct. Chen, it seems our young friend is interested in taking another tour."

"Time for my lesson in courtesy already?" the navigator asked bleakly as the interrogator plucked his wrists off the wall and pressed them into one neat bundle.

"We're trying to make this voyage as educating as possible for you, Mr. Chekov," Goudchaux replied genially.

"Funny to hear you call him 'Mister'," said a voice that made them all turn quickly. Arriving without notice, Stuart Brecht stood lounging against the bulkhead opposite, watching them with his lively, curious eyes. "Makes him sound more like a Starfleet officer than a cabin boy."

Goudchaux's eyes narrowed dangerously. "And if he is?"

"You know I have a buyer for one," Brecht replied genially. "I'm sure I could make it for two, and if not, I've got other prospects."

Chekov could feel his temper rising. Here was the author of all his misfortunes. The other 'half' of the freebooter's transaction was Mr. Scott. "Why, you filthy coss..."

His outburst was abruptly cut off by the placement of Mister Chen's huge hand over his mouth. Slipping a gigantic arm around his chest, Chen lifted him off the ground and out of reach of Brecht as easily as he would a two-year-old.

"Sorry," Goudchaux said, as the ensign continued to struggle profitlessly. "We haven't quite gotten him housebroken yet."

"I have clients who like them with a little spirit."

"Klingons?"

Brecht shrugged discretely. "I could give you five hundred grams of dilithium for him — as is."

"Put him down, Chen," Goudchaux ordered.

The big man lowered Chekov's feet to the deck but held him firmly in place with a solid double grip on his shoulders.

"Five hundred, hmm?" Goudchaux eyed the ensign appraisingly. "I don't know, Brecht. You see, we've grown awfully fond of him... and it's so hard to find someone who makes good coffee. What do you say, Chekov? Are you worth five hundred in dilithium to keep?"

Chekov bit his lip. This ship was the next thing to hell, but the pirates' random cruelties were probably preferable to the disciplined inhumanity of Klingons. And Goudchaux would eventually make a mistake.

"That amount is equal to three and a half years' pay for an ensign," he replied soberly. "Do you plan to keep me alive that long?"

Goudchaux crowed with laughter. "And he's so entertaining. Sorry, Brecht, but I just don't think the crew would forgive me if I let him slip through my fingers."

On the other hand, losing touch with Brecht meant losing his last link to Mister Scott. Chekov cursed himself for immediately thinking only of his own safety, like an addle-brained civilian. When Brecht left, his only chance of freeing the engineer left with him.

"Well..." Brecht smiled easily. "Let me know if you change your mind."

Goudchaux turned to his prisoner as the freebooter entered the lift. "Nice to be wanted, isn't it?"

"Not especially," Chekov answered grimly.

The pirate nodded to his henchman. "Mr. Chen, let's see if we can't make our little guest feel more at home."


	4. Chapter 4

"All right." Goudchaux signaled to Chen to cut the power to the interrogation device they had the ensign strapped to. The pirate slowly walked around the machine as he waited for Chekov's cries to fade to agonized, heaving breaths.

This one was called the 'chair'. It worked on much the same principles as the 'table', but, as his tormentors had discussed at length, had a greater variety of settings. Their favorite was the one that made him feel like a nest of angry hornets were buzzing around inside his skin.

The ensign reminded himself that this was the mere illusion of pain. His nerve centers were being artificially stimulated. No real physical damage was being inflicted… other than the ill effects of repeatedly overstimulating one’s pain receptors, of course… which was definitely _not_ beneficial to one’s health or well-being…

He could tell from the sound that Goudchaux had activated the viewscreen on the wall opposite him.

"Now that you're in a more agreeable mood," the pirate said as he crossed to him and taking a handful of hair jerked Chekov's head up. "Tell me if you've ever seen that before."

On the screen, instead of the picture of Mister Scott that he expected, Chekov saw the medallion. It lay, completely intact for the first time in centuries, on a table somewhere. A small adjustable light source bathed it in a gentle radiance which it seemed to return many times over.

"No," Chekov answered, his voice cracked and hoarse.

At a nod from Goudchaux, Chen sent pain humming through the device again. Chekov cried out, his body arching against the restraints.

"Wrong answer," Goudchaux informed him as he slumped forward again as the agony ebbed.

"No, Captain," Chekov corrected himself defeatedly.

"What a good boy." Goudchaux patted him on the head. "But you know that's not what I mean."

For a moment there was only the sound of Chekov's gasps and the tap of Goudchaux's boots against the deck as he crossed back to the viewscreen.

"I'm disappointed to find out you're a liar, Mr. Chekov," the pirate said. "But I'm glad to see you're such a poor one. This is what you saw on Esme's viewscreen, isn't it?"

Chekov swallowed hard.

The pirate smiled and shook a finger at him. "You see, that's what you get for acting out of character. We were all so puzzled as to why our little Starfleet gentleman would suddenly put a scalpel to a lady's throat, that we just had to keep thinking about it until we came up with an explanation. Perhaps, we thought, he's trying to distract us, turn our attention away from something important... maybe something that he saw that he shouldn't have."

Chekov knew he was caught but remained silent.

The pirate crossed and took a painful grip on his hair again. "Tell me what you know about the Orlan Du," he ordered.

"It is an Orion legend about a lost treasure. I have seen it mentioned in archaeological and socio-historical reports," he admitted. "I do not know anything unusual about the medallion except for the fact that you have the missing fifth shard that has not been seen for centuries."

"Why did you try to hide the fact that you recognized it?"

"I thought that since you had gone to some effort to ascertain that I had a background in Navigation and Science that you might be planning to... eliminate certain members of your crew and use me instead to help you find the treasure... at which point, I would, of course, become… very expendable. I calculated that the less I seemed to know about the Orlan Du, the longer I might live."

"Very astute," Goudchaux commented approvingly as he released him. Crossing back to the screen, he changed the angle of the display to a closer view of the medallion and cut the light source. In the relative darkness, the medallion didn't shine so brightly, but it still glowed with a milky inner light. A dozen or so Orion characters became visible within it. "I don't suppose you read Orion, too, do you?"

Chekov squinted at the screen. "Those are numbers, I think." "Yes." Goudchaux changed the view again. "In fact, they are _these_ numbers."

A nine digit number appeared on the screen, followed by two more.

The ensign shook his head. "Perhaps a navigation code of some sort... to be fed into a particular computer system."

The pirate rolled his eyes impatiently and nodded to Chen. Chekov didn't have time to work out what he was being punished for before a burst of white-hot agony shot through his nerve endings.

"Sorry to be so short with you, Chekov, but we're not in the best of moods at present. You see, we've gone to considerable efforts to assemble this little bauble and now... all we have is a pretty glowing rock and three sets of meaningless numbers." The pirate slapped off the viewscreen. He crossed to his prisoner and put his bony hands around the ensign's neck. "Do you want to live?"

Chekov made no reply.

The pirate snorted. "Oh, how stupid of me. I forgot that in the Academy they teach you to answer 'no' to that question. All right then, I know you don't want to see dear old Mr. Scott die, though, do you? If you don't cooperate, I'm turning him over to Brecht... and you can figure that's going to be a little worse than dying, can't you?"

The pirate squeezed his throat a little tighter, making a response nearly impossible.

"You have five seconds to give me a brilliant idea as to what those numbers mean, or you'll never see your friend alive again."

"I don't know what the numbers mean," Chekov choked out, "but if they wanted... if I wanted to leave something somewhere... so that I didn't know where, but I could find it again... I'd put it in a sensor neutral capsule and feed in a random heading and speed. Add to that an unknown amount of fuel. Then I'd launch the capsule and have my computer put the coordinates into the medallion. You could also double that and have your launch point known only to the computer."

The pressure on his throat lessened.

"Good for a first try," Goudchaux said critically. "But a little vague."

Chekov coughed air back into his throbbing throat as the pirate stepped back and signaled for Chen to loosen his restraints.

"I think we'll all meet here again after dinner to hear what you can come up with next, Mr. Chekov," Goudchaux said, then smiled. "Welcome to the partnership."

* * *

"The quality of your coffee hasn't gone down," Stuart Brecht observed in the dining area some time later, taking the pot from Chekov's trembling fingers. "But your aim has deteriorated considerably."

"He has a nervous condition," Khwaja explained tersely over his coffee cup.

Chekov was unsure if Brecht's status had changed from guest to prisoner. It was ambiguous whether Khwaja was present as a companion or a guard.

"I'd certainly be nervous if I was in his condition," Brecht replied amiably. He caught the ensign by the wrist and examined his hand. "I can tell a lot about a person just from their hands. Look at this one, Khwaja, and you can see right away he isn't used to this sort of work. All the blisters and burns are still fresh."

The pirate shifted uncomfortably in his seat but made no comment.

"No," Brecht remarked judiciously, "these are the hands of someone who's used to working on a computer all day long. Look at those long fingers. They'd come in handy if you were training to be a..."

"Navigator," Chekov supplied helpfully. Brecht, he knew, was probably a dead duck —— not to mention an untrustworthy scoundrel — but he was still the closest thing to a ticket out of this place available for the ensign and Mr. Scott.

"Shut up," Khwaja warned him, "and bring me that coffee."

"Hmm, so you have an interest in navigation?" Brecht mused as Chekov delivered the coffee pot to Khwaja. "What a coincidence. We've all been discussing a perplexing little problem in navigation, haven't we, Khwaja?"

The pirate grunted as the freebooter picked up a data padd that someone had left on the table and tapped something into it. He held it out and beckoned to Chekov. "Tell me what you make of this."

Chekov glanced at it just long enough to recognize the three sets of nine digit numbers. "It looks like a navigation code of some sort."

Brecht took the coffee from him, pulled him into a chair, and placed the padd in his hands. "Look closely, lad. I think you could be more specific."

"Well..." Chekov looked across the table. Khwaja was making a bad attempt at looking disinterested. The ensign took in a deep breath before committing himself to a gamble that the Orion stooge could get him and the _Enterprise’s_ chief engineer off this ship. "These are not conventional coordinates. That makes it look as though someone if trying to hide something."

Brecht nodded. "So far, so good."

"Perhaps these are instructions to a navigational beacon. Embedded in these numbers could be..." Chekov pointed to each line of numbers in turn. "...the location of the beacon; the specific frequency needed to activate it; and the specific times the signal is emitted — that would reduce the likelihood of anyone else receiving it."

"Very clever, for a guess," Brecht congratulated him.

Their colloquy was interrupted by Chen’s entrance.

“Coffee,” he demanded.

Despite his best efforts to remain calm, a shudder ran down the ensign’s spine at the interrogator’s sudden appearance. “Yes, sir,” he said, rising quickly and retreating to the galley. “Right away.”

He was unpleasantly surprised to find that Chen followed him into the small food preparation area and closed the door behind them. “You lie to me.”

Another shudder took a leisure tour of the navigator’s vertebrae. “Mr. Chen,” he said, laughing nervously as he refilled the coffee carafe, “you know better than I how impossible that would be.”

The interrogator put out a large, beefy arm that effectively trapped the ensign in the back half of the narrow galley. “I look up pictures. You resemble your mother — not so much your father.”

Chekov shrugged helplessly, wondering what the hell that fact could possibly have to do with anything. “So people say.”

Chen’s normally impassive features twisted with a flash of rage as he slapped the counter next to him angrily. “Why you tell me you look like your father?”

“You did not ask if I resembled my mother or father more closely,” the navigator explained, wondering why they were having this slightly surreal confrontation. “You asked only asked if I resembled my father. I do.”

Chen’s face twisted into the sort of expression that Oedipus’ might have taken on when he got that prophesy thing wrong.

Chekov flinched as the interrogator’s fists came down on the countertops with a loud crack.

“How do you look like your father?”

The Russian swallowed. “We have the same shoulder width,” he replied, realizing for the first time in his life how ridiculous that sounded. “We have very similar posture…”

Another shudder-inducing smash against the counters. “Don’t lie to me!”

Chekov grit his teeth against this intolerable insult to his character. “I am no liar,” he spat back defiantly.

Unexpectedly this insubordination had an impact. The interrogator’s eyes widened and his bronze features paled as if he suddenly found himself face-to-face with a ghost. The pirate backed up two steps, then, gathering himself and returning to his usual implacable mien, he turned and left without further comment or explanation.

The navigator raised a puzzled eyebrow, wishing that he better understood what had caused the interrogator’s reaction so that he could better produce the same effect again.

“What was that all about?” Stuart Brecht asked, gesturing to the door when the ensign returned to the dining area with the coffee carafe. It seemed that Chen had exited without speaking to his colleagues.

“I have no idea,” the navigator replied, topping off his cup.

“Whatever it was,” the freebooter commented wryly as the ensign crossed to do the same for Khwaja, “apparently you failed to provide satisfaction…”

Chekov shrugged. “It would seem so.”

Khwaja laughed unpleasantly. He reached out one long arm and grabbed the Russian by the shoulder. "He’s not going to get away with that with me."

Chekov wriggled out from the taller man's grasp. "Now, see here..."

"All right, little kitty," Khwaja said, going down into a crouch. "I'll make a game of it, if that's what you want."

"You keep away from me," the navigator warned, setting the coffee down and backing away.

"Or what?" the pirate retorted, immediately spotting the glaring flaw in Chekov's argument.

Khwaja lunged forward. The ensign dived past him and scrambled under the table.

"Give me a hand, Brecht!" the pirate demanded, quickly cornering the navigator again.

"Afraid that just wouldn't be sporting, old man." Brecht rose and headed for the exit. "If you want him, you'll have to catch him."

"Alone at last." Khwaja grinned evilly at the sound of the door sliding shut behind him.

Chekov feinted to the left and dove under the table again. However, he was anticipated this time. Khwaja was over the table and waiting for him.

"Spitfire," he said lightly, dragging Chekov to his feet.

Chekov was able to pull away, but was immediately knocked to the floor by a blow across his cheek. As he landed on his chest, his cuffs clunked and stuck.

Khwaja knelt down by his head. "Keep screaming, kitten. It's more fun that way."

The cuffs slid across the plastic coated decking, free again. Chekov wished fervently that he could divine the mechanism that turned them off and on. Khwaja hooked his hands under the ensign's armpits and dragged him upright once more.

"Let me go!" he demanded, struggling furiously, but already beginning to resign himself to the inevitable.

"No, you really have to keep screaming," Khwaja said, and then bit him hard on the back.

This prompted a deafening response from Chekov.

"That's it, kitten!" Khwaja grinned as he clicked the ensign’s wrists together behind him, spun him around and then slung him over his shoulder.

"Let me go, you filthy son of a cossack bitch!" the navigator shouted, squirming helplessly.

"That's the stuff," Khwaja encouraged him, heading for the door. Before exiting, he turned his head and bit Chekov in the side for good measure. The ensign let out a blood-curdling yell that probably caused washerwomen to miscarry in nearby solar systems.

Goudchaux was strolling up the passageway just outside the doorway.

"I've got him this afternoon," Khwaja growled.

The pirate captain shrugged. "So it seems."

Khwaja let them get a few steps away before he bit Chekov again, prompting another ear-splitting howl.

"Don't kill him," Goudchaux admonished without turning around. "Yet. "

Once inside Khwaja's cabin, Chekov was thrown face forward onto the bunk. His ankles stuck against the metal at the foot of the bed. He could hear the lock on the door being engaged.

"Don't worry..." Khwaja said, in such an even tone that Chekov twisted desperately to see who was in here with them. No one. He was beginning to feel like a yo-yo, plunging into a desperate search for help in one direction after another. Moray Morgain had proved completely compassionless. Esme had been unyielding. Brecht was beginning to seem sympathetic — right before he abandoned him to Khwaja, having first given the man some bright ideas of what to do with him... Was there any point trying to reason with his current persecutor?

He remained twisted uncomfortably so that he could watch what the man was doing. His attention seemed to be on a stack of obviously self-assembled audio equipment. A couple of quick adjustments brought the painful sort of jazz that was currently fashionable in the expensive parts of the Federation swooping and jarring out of a set of paper-thin silicate inertia speakers. Uhura had once tried to introduce her shipmates to the awful noise. However, even she had to admit eventually that it was good for nothing but provoking headaches. Right now, it made Chekov feel acutely homesick.

Khwaja stood motionless for a few moments. Apparently he was more interested in the Bae Amis Quartet than his prisoner.

Finally, Chekov could stand the suspense no more. "What now?"

Khwaja's reflective expression broke into a teasing smile. "Oh, I'm sure you're not so innocent that you can't tell me what happens now. In fact having watched you put up a good fight for the first time since you came aboard makes me quite sure that you do know exactly what happens now." Khwaja knelt down beside the bed and pulled Chekov's head over to one side using a handful of his hair. Chekov struggled to escape but Khwaja followed through and kissed him full on the mouth.

"Please..."

"That's the idea, kitten. If you ask me real nicely, I might change my mind..."

"Khwaja..."

"Or I might not."

"Khwaja!"

Just then several things happened simultaneously. There was a high-pitched whine. The door opened. There was another whine accompanied by a flash of light and Khwaja slumped forward on top of him.


	5. Chapter 5

The person who pushed Khwaja off the ensign turned out to be Stuart Brecht.

"I'm taking the ship," he announced. "Are you with me?"

"Yes," Chekov answered, looking up the barrel of Brecht's Orion-made phaser.

"Good." Brecht released his wrists and ankles. "C'mon. We've got a matter of seconds at the most."

When they entered the corridor, Brecht reached inside his clothing and pulled out another weapon. "I hope you're a good shot," he said, handing it to Chekov as they hurried down the passageway.

This one was a top-of-the-line Klingon disruptor. "With one of these, how good a shot do you need to be?" Chekov asked.

Brecht led him into one of the cabins. What looked like a closet opened onto what was actually a small lift car.

"There's a crawl tube next door that will put me out at the other end of the bridge," Brecht explained, pushing him into the lift. "Shoot at anything that moves, then try to find the intruder alert controls. We'll need to flood the lower decks with sleeping gas as quickly as possible. Oh, and try to keep your hands away from the walls."

"Wait!" Chekov looked down at his arms, suddenly remembering the manacles there. "You've got to get these things off me!"

"Sorry, sport," Brecht apologized as he reached in and set the controls. "But I just don't know how."

"But with this weapon, heading towards the bridge..." Chekov held out his arms helplessly. "I will be setting off every alarm on the ship."

"I hope so," Brecht grinned as the doors closed between them. "You'll draw their fire while I take them from behind. That's the plan."

"_Bozhe Moi_," Chekov said as a half-prayer. Despite the fact it would probably get him killed, Brecht's wasn't a bad plan. The navigator set his weapon at a level that, he hoped, wouldn't breach the hull, pointed it at the lift door and waited.

As he thought it might, the lift halted in between decks.

"All right, angel," came a familiar feminine voice over the intercom. "Be a good boy and put it down."

"No," Chekov replied, hoping this only meant that Brecht had yet to arrive on the bridge. "I'm through with being ordered around."

"And what's driven you to this, sweetheart?" As Morgain spoke, his wrists suddenly magnetized and snapped together, sending his disruptor clattering to the floor. "Have another bad episode with Chen?"

When Chekov knelt to retrieve his weapon, his manacles stuck to the floor.

He could hear Moray Morgain's laughter. "Angel, you just can't seem to win for losing. Why don't you..."

The sizzling sound of phaser fire abruptly cut her off.

After a moment, the lift started under way again. The doors opened to reveal Stuart Brecht standing with his hands on his hips.

"A lot of help you'd be to me in that position," he scolded, kneeling to free him.

"I was supposed to be a diversion, so I was being diverting," Chekov explained dryly. "Do you expect me to believe that you can de-activate these manacles but you don't know how to remove them?"

"That's it, chief." Brecht nodded, returning his disruptor to him and giving him a hand up.

Chekov eyed him narrowly, quite sure that this was not the truth. "You must show me how to de-activate these, then."

"No time for that now, old sport," Brecht said, moving quickly to a computer console on the pirate ship's tiny bridge. "I've gassed the lower decks, but I can't find Goudchaux and Chen on any of the surveillance screens."

The bridge was so small; it could more properly be called a cockpit. It was a rectangular room. The pilot's position was far forward. A command chair sat in the middle and each wall was lined with computer stations. It looked like it could hold a maximum of six people.

Chekov stepped over Moray Morgain's unconscious form to get to the pilot's position.

"I think I've found them," he said, after consulting the ship's sensors.

"Where?" Brecht asked, quickly joining him.

"The docking lock is being activated on your ship."

"Override!"

Chekov shook his head. "It's too late."

"Damn!" Brecht swore, sliding into the pilot's seat. "I knew they had that transfer coil replaced hours ago. Weaponry is over there, lad. Get our shields up and get ready to fire."

It only took the ensign a few seconds to orient himself to the unfamiliar controls. "Shields at maximum. Phaser banks show ready. No photon torpedoes?"

Brecht laughed. "You're not on a starship anymore, my friend."

"I am aware of that," Chekov informed him. "Where is the communications console?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I am going to call Starfleet," Chekov replied. "Request assistance."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible." Brecht drew his weapon and fired it into a console on the opposite wall. "Communications are out."

Chekov frowned as his best link back to civilization hissed, crackled and scorched to death. "That was not a very intelligent thing to do, Mr. Brecht."

"They're pulling away," Brecht announced, his fingers flying over the controls. "Aim for the right forward shield. It's the weakest."

"Right forward shield targeted."

"Then fire and keep on firing until it folds, boy!"

"Firing," Chekov reported aloud out of force of habit. "And it is a... hit! Right forward shield down to thirty per cent. Firing again... A clean miss. They are taking evasive maneuvers. Phaser banks recharging. Incoming fire!"

The pirate ship rocked with the impact.

"Shields holding," Chekov said, clinging to his console.

"But damned if we aren't losing speed!" Brecht flipped buttons frantically. "There's something wrong with the engines!"

"I think they were out of balance."

"Damn! Give them another round of phasers and then see if there's anything you can do for us."

"Firing phasers... Another hit. Right forward shield folding. Firing again... and hitting again... Damage to their forward section."

"That'll slow 'em down," Brecht said with grim satisfaction.

Chekov looked for something that looked like engineering controls. Instead he found a peculiar looking panel on the console next to him. After he pressed a button, the cover slid away to reveal some un-labelled controls. "What's this, Mister Brecht?"

The freebooter looked back quickly, then did a double take. His face split into a broad grin. "Well, bless Goudchaux's paranoid, spendthrift, larcenous little heart. He's bought himself a cloaking device! Press the big button in the middle like your life depended on it, kid!"

The ship jolted from the impact of another phaser salvo as Chekov did so. "Our rear shields are folding. I can't tell if this thing has activated or not."

"Does it show an orange light, chief?" Brecht asked, struggling with his controls.

"Yes."

Brecht smiled and nodded as he changed course. "Orange is Klingonese for good news."

"Does your ship have such a device?" Chekov asked as he searched for the damage control console.

"Don't I wish it did?" Brecht replied with a laugh. "Why do you think the Orions are trying so hard to do business with the Klingons? But..." he added as he saw the ensign's face darken at this, "let's not talk politics."

"They're passing us," Chekov reported, turning back to his monitors. "Our rear shield array is below forty per cent efficiency and we are rapidly losing warp capacity."

"Goudchaux's just about out of sensor range," Brecht confirmed. "I'm taking us down to sub-light."

"We will need a full shut down if we are to effect repairs to the engines."

"We'd better wait around a while to see if Goudchaux has any more cards up his sleeve before we do that."

Chekov snapped his fingers as a happy notion occurred to him. "Mr. Scott! If you free him, then he can help us with the engines."

Brecht smiled guiltily. "I'm sure he could... if he was still on this ship. They transferred him while you were taking waltz lessons from Mr. Chen."

"Damn!" Chekov cursed the ill fortune which had gotten him into this predicament and continued to squash all possibilities of getting him out of it.

"I'm sure the two of us can muddle through somehow," Brecht said cheerfully, as he locked a heading into the course controls. He rose, crossed to a forward locker and removed a gas mask. "I'm going below. I want to take a look at the engine room and see to our guests."

Chekov looked at the still form of Moray Morgain and felt a twinge of concern despite himself. "What are you going to do with them?"

"Lock them up," Brecht said, stepping over her. "She should stay out for a while. I'll be back for her."

"You intend to sell them, don't you?" Chekov asked bluntly. "You intend to sell us all. That's why you refuse to remove my restraints."

Brecht smiled and spread his hands as he paused in front of the lift. "You're jumping to conclusions, chief. Just calm down and see what you can do about damage control. When things settle a little, you and I will sit down over a couple of cups of your excellent coffee and talk this whole thing out."

"You can make your own damned coffee," Chekov informed him coldly.

Brecht put his hands on his hips. "You know, I've had coffee on this ship more than a dozen times and it's never tasted like it does when you fix it."

"It's very simple, really." Chekov folded his arms. "Order coffee from the food supply unit. Add water and put it in the processing unit. Then bring it to me and I will spit in it for you."

Brecht laughed and shook his finger at him as he backed into the lift. "You're a sly little bastard, but I think I like that."

Chekov blew out a long breath as the doors closed on him and turned back to the controls in front of him. He frowned as the piece of illegal Klingon technology that had quite probably saved his or Mr. Scott's life blinked at him diligently. Although his situation appeared to have improved greatly, he was still in bad company.

He picked the disruptor Brecht had given him up off the console and checked it carefully. It seemed to be in working order and fully charged. He engaged the safety and tucked it into the waistband of his trousers.

Damage control turned out to be located on a console to his far right. He initiated repairs on the shields and did what he could to contain the engine malfunction. He then stepped down to the pilot's position.

Comparing sensor output to the computer's navigational charts told him they were very deep in Orion space — deeper than he'd ever been before. Even if they had full warp capacity, it would take days to reach the nearest Federation outpost.

Chekov shook his head. It seemed his situation had only changed from doing what the pirates told him to doing what Stuart Brecht told him. He loosened the neck of his tunic and gingerly reached down to test one of the places where Khwaja had bitten him. All of them still hurt terribly. The skin didn't seem to be broken on this particular one, but he could feel deep impressions of the pirate’s teeth.

Chekov was idly wondering if there was any truth in the old wives' tale that more diseases could be passed by the bite of a human than of most wild animals when a sudden noise caught his attention. He turned in his seat and levelled the disruptor at a crouching figure in black.

Moray Morgain rose to her feet.

"Oh, sweetheart," she sighed, the dim lighting reflecting off her metallic eye patch and the knife in her hand. "I was counting on you not having that."

"I would advise you to remain where you are, Miss Morgain," Chekov said, clicking off the disruptor's safety. "For as the old Russian saying goes, the boot is on the other foot now."

"So it is." She smiled and continued to move forward. "It's your move, choirboy. What are you going to do?"

When his aim didn't waver, she slowed to a halt.

"There's no stun setting on those things, you know," she informed him.

Chekov tightened his grip on the disruptor, forcing himself not to take his eyes off her for the time it would take to verify this. Klingons, he assured himself, were violent, but did know the value of having options. An enemy who was either dead or victorious ruled out a lot of possibilities. He had no doubt, however, that a Klingon would prefer an opponent to have no stun setting on their weapon. "You are assuming that I do not wish to kill you."

Morgain smiled. "I'd bet my life on it."

Chekov drew in a deep breath as she slowly moved one foot forward.

"Then again," she said, withdrawing it at the last moment, "one shouldn't underestimate the wrath of a wounded male ego, should one?"

He motioned with the disruptor. "Drop your knife and move back."

"Still sore at me, hmm?" she asked as she complied. "C'mon angel, grow up. Just because I like to play rough doesn't mean I'm all bad. I was just having a little fun. You know that I really like you, don't you?"

"Put your hands behind your head, please," he ordered.

"What are you going to do? Tie me up?" She shifted her weight to one hip as she slowly stretched her arms up then crossed her wrists behind her neck — showing off the long lines of her beautiful body like a pin-up model. "I'd get excited if I didn't know you weren't into the kinky stuff."

Chekov considered his options. One couldn't be too sure about Klingon armament, but he definitely thought the weapon he was holding was set on stun. Perhaps it didn't matter. Perhaps he should kill her... At any rate, he could club her with the disruptor. To that extent a Klingon weapon had a stun setting of sorts. He could sit and watch her until Brecht came back. He could trust her and move on to doing something else. Unaccountably, he very much wanted to take the last option.

"Why hasn't your new friend Stuart Brecht taken those bracelets off you?" Morgain asked, posing a very legitimate question.

Chekov kept his mouth tightly closed on his lack of an answer.

"Not a full partner, huh? Just a junior mutineer?" she speculated patronizingly. "If Brecht's running the show, I'll bet he'll want my help. This is a small ship, but it's not designed for two-man operation. Where do the two of you intend to go?"

Chekov shifted uncomfortably as she waited for an answer, her one good eye boring into him. He tried to tell himself that he did so simply because his arm was getting tired.

"You don't know, do you, angel?" she answered for him. "You're just riding Brecht's wave, hoping it'll beach you somewhere sandy. Look, sweetheart... I mean, Mr. Chekov..." She smiled as he scowled at her newly adopted courteous manner of address. "You're new to this game, but you're not stupid. Trust me; you could be better off with me than Brecht. After all, you know the worst where I'm concerned. Here, as a gesture of good faith, let me take that ironware off you..."

When she lowered her hands he jerked the disruptor up to cover her.

"My, my, my, but aren't you the suspicious one? But then again, I like that in a man," she said, her tone lowering to a seductive purr. "I like a lot about you... as a man. Come on, baby. Brecht's not your type."

"Put your hands back where they were, Miss Morgain."

She sighed and rolled her good eye as she complied. "What the hell do they do at that Academy? Bring in gorgeous women to flatter you until you're immune to it?"

Chekov knew why he kept toying with the idea of trusting Morgain. It wasn't that she was trustworthy, of course. It wasn't that she was beautiful. It was just so exhausting not to trust anyone. Look where that attitude had gotten the Orlan Du, still dispossessed of their treasure going on three millennia. Then again, he'd gotten into this whole mess by trusting that Mr. Scott wouldn't lead him into trouble. Perhaps it was time he developed a suspicious streak. He stood up, keeping the disruptor aimed at Morgain's head — without making any final check on the setting. "Slide the knife across to me."

"I suppose Stu's got everyone else locked up below decks," Morgain said, pushing the knife towards him with her foot.

Chekov didn't bend to pick it up. He kicked it further away putting himself between the pirate lady and her weapon. "Now lie down, please."

"Sure." She grinned as she lowered herself to the deck on her back. She propped one foot up on the engineer's seat and the other on the railing opposite. "Be gentle with me, angel."

Chekov cleared his throat. "The other way around, please, Miss Morgain."

"Whatever turns you on, sugar," Morgain teased, rolling onto her stomach.

Despite his best efforts, Chekov could feel himself blushing. Moray Morgain was making this very difficult. He'd never tied up a woman before... particularly not a woman he'd been intimate with. And despite her shameful treatment of him and her general lack of good character, Moray Morgain was undeniably a woman... noticeably from this angle.

The navigator cleared his throat again, trying to regain the sense of depersonalized detachment Morgain was attempting to deny him. He crossed her hands against the small of her back, then put his knee on top of them.

"That hurts," his captive informed him, as he placed the barrel of the disruptor against the back of her neck. "And that thing's cold."

"One moment." Using his free hand, the ensign ripped the sleeve off the arm holding the disruptor. He put the top of the sleeve in his mouth and tore it in half. He then carefully tied first her wrists then her ankles together with the shreds.

"Oh, come on!" she protested as he tore off his other sleeve and used it to tie her wrists to her ankles. "What do you think I'm going to try to do?"

"Escape and kill me," Chekov answered, tucking the disruptor into his waistband again as he turned to the engineering console.

"Well, there's that," Morgain replied dryly, then tried to blow the dirt and hair away from her mouth. "Khwaja should have gotten you to lick this deck clean while he was at it. What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Chekov replied, crossing to what was left of the communications console. One thing that he had learned from the miserably boring four weeks he'd been assigned to the Communications Division on the _Enterprise_ was that the hardest thing in communications was making a ship not make noise. He knew of ways to generate subspace messages from half a dozen of the ship's systems. Uhura knew hundreds.

Sorting through the options available to him, Chekov remembered the distinctive sound of the pirate ship’s mis-phased engines. Working quickly, the navigator set up a program that would cause the warp drive to send out Starfleet distress codes all the time it was operating above a certain speed. He then hid the program, along with a handful of other useful glitches, deep in the housekeeping routines of the ship.

"This isn't the Academy, you know," Morgain warned him as he crossed to do a quick review of the progress of damage control. "Stu's not going to give you any extra points for taking the initiative."

Chekov ignored her as he sat down at what functioned as the science console and put the numbers from the medallion on the screen in front of him, nice and big.

"Oh, so he's not made of stone, after all," Morgain mocked, twisting to keep sight of him. "Not even little Mister Goody-Two-Shoes can resist the call of the treasure of the Orlan Du, huh? What is it, angel? Longing for a little fortune and glory? Get a taste of the life beyond 'yes, sir', 'no, sir', and decide you like it?"

"Hardly."

"Oh, I see," she said sarcastically. "You're just into it for the intellectual challenge. Of course."

Rather than replying, he had the computer display the numbers one at a time out of sequence.

"Even if they are navigational coordinates, they don't do us much good, do they?" Morgain continued, the mocking tone gradually dropping out of her voice

Chekov had long since dismissed the possibility that they were anything of the sort. However, since he didn't particularly want her to know what he was thinking, he went along with her. "If we knew what system they used, if that information is available somewhere..."

"Stu will have it," she said confidently. "Tell me, Chekov, if you thought we could find the treasure — and that you'd survive — you couldn't pass up a chance like that, could you?"

He turned around and looked at her. "What are you suggesting?"

"There's not going to be a reward for finding the treasure and turning it in, y'know. Although nobody really owns it now, I doubt the Orions are going to let anybody keep it. If you want to find the treasure, you've got to be prepared to spend the rest of your life very well disguised..."

"And it might not be a very long life."

"It would be a pleasanter life if you had some friends who were in the same situation," Morgain said persuasively, "who'd understand your problems..."

Chekov was beginning to wish he'd gagged her as he turned back to the numbers. He had the computer arrange them back into their original order and began methodically trying all the possible solutions... then dismissing them one by one. After a few minutes of silent contemplation, he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the engineering console, steepling his fingers. It definitely helped...

The lift doors swooshed open. "You're sure you're a navigator, not an engineer?"

"Quite sure." Chekov tried to recapture his last promising train of thought, but Brecht's breathless arrival had completely disrupted it.

"Oh, hello Moray," Brecht said, almost stumbling over her. "Long time since I've seen you like that."

Morgain made an obscene suggestion.

"Only in my dreams," Brecht replied amiably as he retrieved her knife.

"What are you doing?" Chekov asked as the freebooter cut the tie between her wrists and her ankles.

"We're going to need her."

"Wait. Stop," Chekov said firmly. "I would prefer you didn't do that without consulting me first."

Brecht rolled his eyes as he stood and put his hands on his hips. "Okay, chief, what's the problem?"

"He's still pouting because I..."

"That isn't it," Chekov quickly interrupted her. "And don't call me 'chief'."

"Military men and their titles," Brecht shrugged elaborately. "So what are you? A lieutenant?"

"An ensign."

"Is that higher or lower than a lieutenant?"

"It's somewhat lower than captain," Chekov admitted.

"Well, look, Commodore," Brecht said, "The plain truth of the situation is that we don't have any engines. At least not that will get us anywhere."

"What seems to be wrong?" Chekov asked, crossing to the engineering console and checking the read outs.

"That panel isn't talking to them, for a start. That mis-phasing — how did you know about it, anyway?"

"Little forest animals told me about it," Chekov replied unhelpfully.

"I think you're more of an engineer than you're letting on," Brecht accused. "Anyway, the resonance has shaken the dilithium crystals all but to pieces. I guess we can stay cloaked for another twelve hours, or make it about one tenth of the way back to Federation space at warp one, and then we're belly up."

"That five hundred grams of dilithium..."

"Nearer to nine hundred," Brecht corrected. "I never start with my top bid."

"...Is in Goudchaux's possession on the... what was it?"

"_Black Beauty_."

Chekov frowned. "How can Miss Morgain help us?"

"I could get out and push," she suggested.

"She can send a message to Goudchaux."

"Goudchaux?" Chekov repeated disbelievingly.

"I know, I know," Brecht waved aside his protest. "But this ship is a wreck. It makes me wonder if Goudchaux didn't intend to help himself to my _Black Beauty_ all along. Goudchaux's got the dilithium crystals, Goudchaux's got the medallion, Goudchaux's got..."

"...Mr. Scott," Chekov said, coming around to the idea, "who could re-phase the engines..."

"But only if he thought he was going to be using them to get home," Brecht pointed out.

"That's not a bad thing," the navigator assured him.

"Not for you, Commodore, but I have very good reasons for not wanting to go back to Federation territory. How d'you think your good friend Scott would respond to a three way split?"

On the deck, Moray Morgain cleared her throat. "Make that a four-way split. You'd need me to lure Goudchaux in close enough for you to catch him."

Chekov crossed his arms. "Why should he come back for her?"

"She could tell him she'd gotten control of the ship," Morgain replied. "He'll come back for that cloaking device and God knows what else he's got stashed on this boat."

"And..." Brecht smiled. "For the brilliant idea you've come up with about those numbers."

Chekov bit his lower lip thoughtfully as he looked back at the screen behind him. The first two were as much a mystery as ever. Glancing at the third, without preconceptions, he realized that it was his birthday, in conventional Terran format rather than a stardate, plus a check digit. How ridiculous. "I will agree to luring Goudchaux back, but only under one condition..."

"Commodore." Brecht held up a silencing hand. "You seem to be laboring under the mistaken notion that I'm asking your permission. I'm not. I appreciate your cooperation, but that's the extent of it. I'm not out to hurt you and I'll try to see you get out of this alive... Lord knows, a friend in uniform would do me good sometimes. However, realize now, son, my prime objective is getting Stuart Gordon Brecht out of here in one piece... Either with your Mr. Scott or a sufficient share of the treasure to pay off my backers."

"Like I told you, angel," Morgain said into the thickening silence between the two men, "you're only a junior mutineer on this cruise."

Chekov held up his wrists. "Take these off me. You cannot deal with Goudchaux by yourself. And you cannot pilot this ship by yourself. And you cannot trust Miss Morgain."

"I'd love to, Commodore." Brecht shrugged. "I just don't know how."

Chekov pointed to his captive. "She does."

"No, I don't," Morgain insisted.

"I won't cooperate with you until I am freed," the navigator maintained stubbornly.

"Hmm." Brecht's face didn't show any possibility of relenting.

It looked like stalemate. The ensign didn't bother to point out that Morgain had offered to remove the manacles earlier. To expect her to have been telling the truth struck even him as pitiably naive.

Chekov lowered his arms and drew in a deep breath. "I do have an idea."

"About the numbers?" A smile began to play about Brecht's lips. "Well, let's hear it, Admiral."

Chekov silently held his wrists back up.

"Bull-headed little son of a bitch, isn't he?" Morgain commented sympathetically from the deck as Brecht sighed and stuck the knife in the top of his boots.

"Tell me about this idea," Brecht said, coming forward and taking one of his wrists.

"It would require two ships to implement." Chekov noted that Brecht held his arm in a position that didn't allow the ensign to see exactly what he was doing.

"How convenient, Admiral. How very convenient." Brecht stepped back. "There you are. If they catch you, they can turn them on again, but..."

Chekov looked at his still heavily encumbered arms and shook his head. "I want these off," he insisted.

"I told you I couldn't do that," Brecht replied. "I deactivated them. That's all I can do."

"Then show me how you did that."

"Maybe after you tell me about this idea of yours."

Chekov frowned. He simply couldn't allow this 'junior mutineer' treatment to go any further.

"Mr. Brecht..." he began, reaching out and putting a conspiratorial hand on the freebooter's shoulder.

"Yes?"

Taking advantage of the element of surprise and the added weight on his arm, Chekov slugged Brecht across the jaw. As his victim reeled from the blow, the ensign deftly plucked Brecht's weapon from his side. He then caught the bigger man's arms behind his back in a very effective security hold he'd learned at the very Academy these pirates were so fond of sneering at.

"Give me a reason to trust you, Mr. Brecht," Chekov said, pressing the cold barrel of the disruptor to the freebooter's neck with his free hand.

On the floor near them, Moray Morgain was laughing. "You've got to watch him every minute, Stu."

"Shut up," Brecht replied, then as Chekov twisted his arm painfully higher, "Ow! Why, you ungrateful, young..!"

"I have very little to be grateful for... yet."

"Sorry, my mind's gone blank," Brecht answered obstinately. "Pain has that effect on me."

"How interesting," Chekov said unsympathetically. "I've recently learned that pain makes me impatient, vindictive and very, very angry. So tell me, how do you get these things off?"

"I don't know. Ow! ... All right, all right. There's a code you have to input. A different one for each of them, if I remember correctly. And I don't know what it is."

Brecht landed flat on his face on the floor. He started to get up, then flung himself back down at the sound of the disruptor discharging. "What the..?"

Chekov was gingerly inspecting a scalded, naked wrist.

"You idiot! Did Chen short-circuit your brain?" Brecht demanded, keeping a safe distance away from the ensign. "That thing could have blown your hands off — or worse..."

The disruptor made similarly short work of the remaining three cuffs. Chekov had to lean on a nearby console for a moment. His face had gone white and tight with unacknowledged pain. Mastering this, he stepped forward and held Brecht's gun out to him.

The freebooter made no move to take it. "What?"

"I have no choice, Mr. Brecht. Like you, I cannot pilot this vessel alone. I doubt if I can even get it running properly. I must trust you or remain stranded here. All I wish is to regain Mr. Scott's freedom and return safely to Federation territory. If the price for that is helping you find your treasure, then so be it."

Brecht reached for his weapon. "A very half-hearted reason to do business, Mr. Chekov, but I appreciate your frankness with me."

Despite their truce, Chekov didn't offer the renegade a hand up. Brecht, on the other hand, didn't look like he expected one.

"All right, Moray," the freebooter said, dusting himself off. "Tell us why you shipped out with Goudchaux."

Morgain countered with a suggestion that Brecht perform a certain activity with a particular four-horned species of Arcturian herd beast.

"Never on a Sunday," Brecht replied.

"Miss Morgain," Chekov intervened. "We are trying to decide if we should trust you enough to allow you to help us, or if we should kill you. Cooperation would be in your best interest."

Brecht, much impressed, whistled. "These people have been a bad influence on you, Commodore. I do believe you're threatening the lady."

Morgain rolled over and up into a seated position. "It's just a stupid question. I mean, it's not like I'm working for charity here."

"I know there's a history between you and Goudchaux," Brecht said, "On account of Old Mac."

"Yeah," Morgain admitted. "But as I figure it, he owes me."

"The question is," Chekov interjected, trying to bring the conversation back onto a level in which he could participate, "do you feel you owe Goudchaux a favor?"

"Look, kid, I'm working for money here — and lots of it. There's no love lost between me and Bardon Goudchaux."

"Well, Commodore." Brecht turned to him with his hands on his hips. "Do we untie her?"

Chekov nodded, more than half certain he was going to regret this. "What did you do with the other two crew members, Mr. Brecht?"

"They are lodged in what I believe used to be your cabin, Mr. Chekov. No need to worry about them for a while. The next thing we need to do is to lure Goudchaux in. So — if you don't mind — let's switch off the cloaking device, and wait until the _Black Beauty_ comes close enough to parley on the short range transmitter."

Brecht dropped the impromptu binders that had immobilized Morgain and rubbed her wrists for her affectionately. Chekov glanced back from killing the ship's one last defense just in time to catch sight of this little gesture. It gave him a bad feeling in his stomach. Still, he was quite surprised a moment later, as he was reaching to request an update from the damage control computer, to simultaneously hear the whine and feel the shock of a blast from an Orion phaser as it hit him solidly in the back.


	6. Chapter 6

"Sauce for the goose," Brecht commented as he entered Morgain's cabin a few hours later.

The pirate lady had left the ensign much as he had secured her on the bridge earlier — lying on his stomach on her cabin's floor with his arms locked behind him and his ankles pulled up and fastened to his wristlocks by the last shreds of his shirt. She'd also gagged him and tied one of his arms to the leg of a table so he couldn't roll into a different position.

"Sorry that I wasn't in time to save you, sport," Brecht apologized breezily as he unfastened the tie between Chekov's ankles and wrists and untied him from the table leg. "But I didn't know she had you. I told her to lock you in one of the cargo bays — thinking you wouldn't want to be rooming with Khwaja for any length of time. It wasn't 'til I went there to look for you that I realized where you probably were."

Brecht helped him up to a more comfortable sitting position, but didn't release him or untie the gag.

"You see, Commodore," he said, sitting down next to him as if it were a perfectly normal scene. "When you punched me, that got some brain cells to working. And it came to me that we're in the middle of Khwaja's stomping grounds. Seeing that you seem to be one to hold a grudge, I didn't think you'd be exactly enthusiastic about soliciting his help."

Chekov shook his head in a vigorous negative.

"Exactly, exactly," Brecht replied to his unspoken objections. "He's a vile one and putting ourselves temporarily in the hands of some of his cronies is a dangerous proposition — but it's less dangerous than going toe-to-toe with Bardon Goudchaux in a crippled ship."

Although he could see the freebooter's point, the ensign still shook his head.

"That's what I thought you'd say." Brecht crossed his arms. "And in the port where we're going to be docking, it's dangerous to have someone running loose who can't open his mouth without giving away that he's Starfleet. So you're going to cool your heels with good Doctor Esme while we put in for repairs with some close and discrete friends of Mr. Khwaja."

Chekov blew a frustrated breath out of his nostrils and glared at the renegade.

"Now, don't take it that way, Commodore," Brecht soothed him, getting up and rummaging through Moray Morgain's things. "Because I do want to stay on good terms with you. After all, you're the one who's figured out the secrets of the Orlan Du."

Carrying a black jacket, Brecht returned and deactivated the locks on Chekov's ankles.

"Look on your confinement as purely a temporary measure for your own protection," the freebooter suggested as he hauled the ensign up to standing by his still bound arms and draped the jacket over his bare shoulders. "While you're in the holding cell, it'll be easier for me to keep Moray and Khwaja off your... well, away from you. And once we're under way again, I promise you'll be restored to full privileges."

Chekov had little choice but to go along as Brecht guided him towards the door with one hand on his shoulder.

"Think of it as an opportunity to double-check your calculations," Brecht suggested cheerfully, leading him out into the corridor.

At the end of that passageway was the last person on this small ship Chekov wanted to run into.

"Ah!" Khwaja came forward with a gleaming smile on his face. He wrapped a large blue-purple hand around the ensign's upper arm. "Just the little animal I've been looking for."

"Ah, Khwaja," Brecht said mildly as he smiled and pulled Chekov back towards himself. "I was just going to call you. We've a little engineering problem that I..."

The other pirate did not return the smile as he tightened his grip on the ensign. "You owe me, Brecht."

"Yes." The freebooter sighed and released Chekov into Khwaja's sole control. "Yes, I do."

"Right." Khwaja shoved the ensign down the corridor in front of him.

"But, Khwaja..." Brecht stopped him by putting a hand on his shoulder. Then, as Chekov had done previously, the freebooter followed up with a powerful right to the pirate’s jaw. "I don't owe you that damned much," he said to the crumpled form on the deck as he reclaimed Chekov. "This way, Admiral."

"You're making a mistake, Brecht."

Chekov turned to find that Khwaja had a phaser trained on them.

Brecht shook his head and folded his arms. "I can't believe we're already down to pointing weapons at each other. Now, Khwaja, you're not going to make a fool of yourself over a brown-eyed boy, are you? I mean, look at him. He's not exactly rough trade, is he?"

Chekov wasn't quite sure what 'rough trade' was, but did his best not to look that way, nonetheless.

"He's not your type, mate," Brecht assured the other man. "I mean, for God's sake, we're in a port — a port where you're known. Go spend a credit and rent a dozen like him... but leave off with this one."

Khwaja's aim didn't waver. "Either he comes with me, Brecht, or I kill him where he stands," the pirate promised grimly.

For the first time since Chekov had met him, the freebooter seemed stuck for a reply. Brecht looked slowly back and forth between the two of them.

"I do need you alive, Commodore," he apologized. "I need both of you alive..."

Khwaja grinned as he picked himself off the floor. "I knew you'd see it my way."

"...for the moment," Brecht finished. "You're making a serious mistake here, Khwaja. You're crossing me and you should know that's not a good idea."

"What's the matter, Brecht?" The pirate smiled as he pulled the ensign forward by one arm. "You decide you like him? Well, don't worry. I'm not going to hurt him. I'm going to be very nice to him."

Chekov pulled away violently, but Khwaja was ready for him. Instead of resisting, the bigger man pushed him in the direction he was pulling and tripped him. The pirate was also ready for Brecht, leveling his phaser at the freebooter as he started forward.

"Say bye-bye, Brecht." Khwaja grinned as he held the ensign down with one foot on his chest. When the freebooter didn't move, the pirate swung his phaser on the ensign. "One way or the other."

Brecht frowned. "Well, Commodore, it seems my hands are tied for the moment... Don't give our friend here any trouble. I expect you to be as cooperative as you were being with me on the bridge."

'Thanks for nothing,' Chekov thought loudly as the freebooter reluctantly backed through the 'lift doors. He did not share Brecht's confidence that he could catch Khwaja unawares the way he had done the Orion sympathizer.

The pirate grinned down at him. "Don't you just love it when everyone fights over you? All right, kitten. Will you walk, or do you want to be carried again?"

Chekov rose awkwardly without any help from his captor. As he set off down the corridor, it began to sink in what he was walking into.

'This can't be real,' he thought. 'This can't be happening to me. There has to be a way out of this.'

No way out presented itself. Despite his feelings of unreality, his bonds and the phaser in the hand of the man behind him remained quite real.

'I should provoke him to shoot me now,' the ensign decided. 'I should have shot myself while I had the disruptor... but I must remain alive. I am the only one who can do anything for Mr. Scott...'

Then again, considering what Scott had gotten him into, he was beginning to feel that the next time he had an opportunity, he'd just shoot the engineer himself.

Reasoning that he had little to lose, Chekov took a deep breath and prepared to make a run for it. 'Three... Two...' he counted down silently, '...One!'

Khwaja stopped him short, grabbing a handful of the ensign's hair before he was half a pace away.

"Wrong way," he growled, shoving his captive through the door to his cabin. Khwaja marched him to a position in the center of the room.

"Good kitty. Stay," he ordered mockingly. Keeping one eye on the ensign the pirate walked over to what turned out to be a wall safe.

Chekov took in a deep breath through his nose, refusing to give in to panic. He had to work out a strategy of some sort. If there was no hope of escape, then he at least had to figure out some way of getting through this with a shred of dignity. Brecht was right, he had to fight. He couldn't just disassociate and pretend nothing was happening to him, frustrate his tormentor by suppressing all reaction. He wondered how well that particular Vulcan technique worked. He'd have to ask Mr. Spock.

"You know, they should gag your eyes, not your mouth," the pirate commented, depositing his weapon into the safe and locking it. He then stepped over and switched on his audio equipment. Unfortunately, the pirate's taste in music had not improved. "All right... no more games."

Chekov stood rigid, waiting for the right opening to attack as Khwaja moved behind him and lifted Morgain's jacket off his shoulders. The pirate clucked his tongue sympathetically as he lightly ran a finger over the bite marks on Chekov's back.

As the ensign was tensing himself to move, Khwaja unexpectedly deactivated the cuffs on his wrists. He then did something else and the cuffs came off completely.

"There." The pirate patted him on the shoulder. "Does that make you feel better?"

It made Chekov feel more worried. If Khwaja didn't want him helpless, what did he want? As he rubbed his wrists nervously, he felt strong fingers untying the gag at the back of his head, pulling at the hair that had tangled into the strip of shirt fabric. With his freedom to speak restored, the ensign found he had nothing to say.

Khwaja stepped over to a chair and threw him the material draped over it. "Put this on."

It was a shirt. One of the pirate's and several sizes too large. Another puzzling, but seemingly welcome development.

Khwaja crossed his arms and made a slow circle around him as the ensign struggled into the garment. "I suppose that you're familiar with the works of your countryman, Konstantin Stanislavsky?"

"What?" Chekov paused in rolling up the nearly knee-length sleeves. "What are you talking about?"

"Method acting," the pirate explained. "Emotion memory. I want you to remember exactly how you feel at this moment. This is the way you react around me. Understand?"

"Y... yes."

"Now, let me introduce myself." Khwaja sat down on the foot of his bed. "I'm Lieutenant Commander Darquan Hanton, Starfleet Intelligence. And before you get any ideas, I have no intention of doing one damned thing to help you. So don't kid yourself. I have a mission here. I've spent too many years building my cover to put it at risk for you. Understood? Just telling you this is far more than I should do. If you have the choice between betraying me and dying, I'd prefer you took the second option. So would Starfleet. Understood?"

Chekov nodded on cue as if he'd forgotten the gag was gone.

The apparently not-so-much-a-pirate thrust his head forward impatiently. “Questions?” he demanded, almost rudely.

“But… you’re…” the ensign stammered, overwhelmed. “You’re…”

“My father was Orion,” he explained, waving off any more fulsome detailing of his unlikely road to his present occupation. “We don’t have time to review my resume. What’s important is this idea you have about the numbers. What is it?"

"I haven't... Can I sit down?" The navigator’s legs had begun to shake.

The half-Orion agent gestured him towards the cabin’s only chair. "Be my guest."

Despite Khwaja's... Hanton's new found legitimacy, Chekov pulled the chair out from the desk and sat on that rather than the bed. His heart was pounding unpleasantly as he took a moment to compose himself and order his thoughts on the subject of pirate treasure.

"From what I remember of the legend of the Orlan Du, they stole the treasure from an Orion Warlord. He pursued them and therefore the pirates developed the need to disappear for a time. The Orlan Du required a short-term hiding place for their treasure that no one of them could come back and plunder while the others were still in hiding. They also did not wish for the treasure to be discovered by anyone else, of course. However, it does not seem that they were considering long term concealment."

"Right."

Khwaja was poker-faced. Chekov was sure he must have thought out this much for himself, but the pirate — Intelligence Agent — wasn't giving anything away.

"If they had landed on a planet, or even an asteroid, their presence most probably would have been detected and recorded in some way. Orion sensor technology, even in that day, would have made it easy enough to find anything left or buried on the surface of a planet. Also, if they had left the treasure on a planet, then each of them would know the location. There would be no need for the medallion."

"Go on."

"Therefore..." An awful thought occurred to Chekov. He had been so pleased to learn that Khwaja wasn't Khwaja, he hadn't considered that the man might be lying to him. "Uh... therefore the numbers are almost certainly bearings. I think we'll find the treasure in a sensor-shielded capsule at the intersection of those bearings. The only problem is the bearings are on fixed points of some sort. The Orlan Du would have known which... uh... three points. Maybe stars. That is what must be deduced."

"Must be deduced?" Khwaja echoed. "Do you know how many stars there are in this galaxy? And then there are other galaxies. They could have sighted on those. And why three? You only need two bearings to fix a point. And..."

"They were not trying to tell us where the treasure is," the ensign reminded him. "Quite the opposite. If the Orlan Du had all been captured together or if all the parts of the medallion had gotten into the wrong hands, they wouldn't have wanted the information to be easily accessible. There must be a sixth piece of information that all the pirates knew."

The other man frowned at him in a most un-ally-like way.

Chekov cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Commander, but I do not think there is any reason to assume we can solve this puzzle. We do not even know for certain that the treasure was not found ages ago."

"Parts of it would have shown up by now," Khwaja retorted, his eyes narrowed. "And we can find it. If the Orlan Du couldn't go back for it themselves, they would have been able to sell the information, maybe bargain with it for their lives..."

For an impartial Starfleet officer, Hanton seemed reluctant to admit that he might be on a wild goose chase.

"Sir, what happened to them?" Chekov asked. "The five who had the pieces of the medallion?"

"Don't get into the habit of calling me 'sir'." Khwaja — Chekov found he couldn't get out of the habit of thinking of him as that — got up and began to pace restlessly. "You're a real pessimist, aren't you?"

"What does Starfleet want with this treasure anyway?"

"What?" Khwaja paused. "Oh, come on, Ensign, you know that's none of your business."

Chekov was beginning to feel increasingly certain that Khwaja was Khwaja after all. However, it seemed he was better off going along with the man's fantasy than challenging it. "What about the Orlan Du? What happened to them?"

A Starfleet Intelligence Officer would know. Khwaja plainly did not... Or maybe he just didn't choose to share the information. "I think we can find out."

"We should do more research," Chekov suggested. "The more we can find out about the Orlan Du, the more likely we are..."

Khwaja/Hanton snorted. "You think this is a Federation Starship? We don't have a library computer; I doubt you'd find anything on board more intellectual than Goudchaux' collection of pornographic novels."

"I will speak to Brecht. He has lived with the Orions."

"You won't talk to anyone about any of this," the other man ordered curtly. "Understood? And if you've got any sense, you'll stop dropping hints that you know anything. Once they're not so busy nursing the engines, someone will find the time to open you up and see if there's anything useful inside."

"If I do not know anything of use," Chekov pointed out, "they might kill me."

Khwaja/Hanton smiled coldly. "Perhaps it would be better for you... and me... if they did."

A reply to this didn't spring to mind immediately.

"So," Khwaja continued after a moment. "We have some time to kill. How good an actor are you? Are you going to be able to walk out of here looking ravished?"

"Yes," Chekov replied with double the confidence he felt.

From the other man's expression, that wasn't enough.

"I think that a little more method acting practice is in order." Khwaja picked up the cuffs from the desk. "Put those back on."

Chekov swallowed hard as he looked up at the pirate. "Why?"

"Because I'm ordering you to, Ensign."

Chekov took a good look at the cuffs before he obeyed. There was a small display on the inner surface of each which currently showed a three digit number. The code to open them? The battery level? He returned them to his wrists and snapped them shut. As the second one closed it adhered to the first.

Khwaja took him by the shoulders and drew the ensign to his feet.

"I hate to do this to you," he said with a grim smile, "but it's in the interests of Starfleet..."

* * *

"Ahhh…” Khwaja yawned, sitting up on his bunk. “We've arrived."

Being an experience spacefarer, Chekov recognized the sound and feel of grappling arms from some sort of docking bay reaching out to engage the small ship they were on. However, being accustomed to flying a much larger, sturdier vessel, he wasn’t prepared for the sudden lurch the pirate ship made as it settled into dock, knocking him into the nearest bulkhead.

His alleged new ally merely laughed as the ensign struggled to his feet.

"If I'd known you were going to do that," Khwaja drawled, "I wouldn't have had to knock you around."

Chekov put a hand up to his face. His collision with the wall had reopened the split lip half-Orion had given him half an hour earlier.

"Where are we?" the navigator could barely bring himself to speak civilly to the supposed commander. He was having serious doubts about the plausibility of Khwaja’s “secret agent” story. Immediately holding him down and hitting him had not been a convincing manner of establishing credibility.

"A ship yard.” The perhaps pirate lazily pulled on his boots. “Not a particularly respectable one, but discrete and efficient. They may also have access to a databank, so maybe I can answer some of your questions."

"You could take me along," Chekov suggested. Emboldened, he pressed, "You could arrange to leave me here."

Khwaja/perhaps/Hanton shook his head and frowned as he rose from his bed.

"I have told you all I know," the ensign insisted. "As you said yourself, it is dangerous for me to talk to your shipmates. If I am not on board, I could not endanger your cover."

The maybe pirate/maybe Intelligence Agent waved his blue-purple hands negatively. "Not a good idea."

"Why?"

"Not at this port." Khwaja smirked and folded his arms as he met the ensign's defiant look. "Don't you believe me? Well, come on, junior. I'll take you portside and let you see for yourself. Trust me, you don't want to jump ship here. Two minutes and you'll be begging me to get back on board."

Chekov could hardly picture this as he followed Khwaja out into the corridor. He couldn't imagine what could be so vile about a simple shipyard that the pirate and/or Intelligence Officer should be so confident he'd prefer this ship. Finding transport back to the Federation might be a problem. Chekov decided he could work as an engineer or some other sort of technician to finance his passage. This might take... years? The ensign was still willing to give it a try.

There was an unfamiliar humming in the fabric of the ship that momentarily worried Chekov until he identified it as vibration transferred from a space station.

"Where do you think you're taking him?" Brecht stepped unexpectedly out of the 'lift and barred their way. "He's not going off ship."

Khwaja crossed his arms insolently. "Why not?"

"Use your brains, man," Brecht suggested acidly. "Don't you think he'll try to escape? Or do you think that he's charmed with you now?"

Khwaja casually shoved the ensign against a nearby bulkhead. "He knows what will happen to him if he tries."

"But that doesn't exactly change the fact that he's highly motivated to leave us, now does it?" Brecht pointed out almost sweetly, as Chekov stayed where he had been pushed with his eyes carefully on the deck. "He's a slippery one. What if he manages to get past you — if only for a moment? Only long enough to call for help? Only long enough to open his big mouth and announce to all and sundry that we're on the trail of the Orlan Du? Do you have any idea what would happen if all your lovely friends here were to get wind of that?"

From his expression, Khwaja did. Apparently, it wasn't a pretty picture.

"Sorry, junior," he said with a shrug. "You'll have to stay here with Uncle Stuie. Well, I guess I'd better go negotiate some repair work, right?"

Brecht nodded towards the bridge. "Take Moray with you."

Khwaja smiled. "Don't you trust me?"

"I trust you about as far as I could comfortably spit a foot of your intestines," Brecht returned. "And how exactly are you intending to pay for whatever we need done?"

"I'll call in some favors, sell a little of Goudchaux's cargo..."

"Cargo?" Brecht looked surprised. "There's no tonnage in the hold."

"Well..." Khwaja reached out and tousled Chekov's hair. "He's not very heavy, is he?"

Brecht looked even less amused than the ensign was. "And just who do you think would trade dilithium for him?"

"I'm sure I could find someone," Khwaja said, a teasing tone entering his voice. "Klingons... middle men... junk dealers..."

Brecht shook his head. "You're trying my patience, mate."

"Uncle Stuie's really become attached to you, junior," Khwaja said, patting the ensign's face roughly. "You've done a good job of tricking him into thinking you're valuable enough to keep alive."

"Leave off with him, Khwaja," Brecht ordered irritably.

"Come on, Brecht." Khwaja grabbed Chekov by the back of the collar and pulled him in front of him. "You really believe this little worm knows any more about those numbers than you could work out yourself?"

Brecht frowned. "That's my affair."

Having planted the idea that Chekov knew nothing worth grilling him for, Khwaja was content to change the subject. "There's five hundred kilos of powdered Illissium in the storage lockers in Goudchaux's cabin. That should be enough."

The freebooter grunted his agreement.

Kwhaja unexpectedly picked up Chekov's wrists and pinned him to the side of the corridor. "Be good while I'm gone," he said, leaning forward and running his tongue up the ensign's cheek producing, of course, an extremely convincing display of revulsion from his captive. "See you soon, Brecht."

Chekov tugged furiously at the cuffs, knowing that it would do him no good. "That filthy..."

"Shh..." Brecht cautioned as Khwaja disappeared into the lift.

"What's Illissium?"

"A drug." Brecht frowned as he released the ensign from the wall. "Highly addictive but largely harmless. Leaves you in almost complete control of yourself but feeling like the annual budget of the Federation. Glad to see you managed to get the best out of three falls, Commodore."

Chekov quickly wiped off his cheek. "What?"

Brecht tilted his head up and examined the ensign's swollen lip. "Since you're still speaking to me at all, I assume that Khwaja has a similarly impressive set of bruises to show for his efforts. Next time, he'll not be content just to bash you around."

Chekov pulled away and lowered his eyes, remembering he was supposed to be looking 'ravished'.

Brecht put his hands on his hips. "We'll just have to see there isn't a next time, won't we? — Not that you need to be getting any ideas. You leave Khwaja to me, understand?"

Chekov made no reply. He was somewhat concerned that if Khwaja really was Hanton then the Intelligence Agent had made a rather dangerous enemy, thanks to him.

"All right." Brecht jerked his head towards the 'lift. "Up to the bridge with you."

Chekov held out his hands. "You said full privileges..."

"I said, once we're under way," Brecht replied, giving him a firm push forward. "Now, move before I take a mind to move you myself."

Chekov did as he was told. When they emerged, open double doors opposite the lift led into an airlock. The docking spur of the station was visible through this passage way. The structure looked unfamiliar. Not Orion... Although, given that race's habit of thieving from around the galaxy, Orion 'style' was sometimes hard to pin down.

"No." Brecht turned him back towards the bridge. "Don't even think about it, lad."

The ensign dug his heels in. "Don't push me around, Mister Brecht. I want to know where we are."

"Don't you start with me too, Admiral," Brecht warned. Seeing Chekov wasn't going to move without putting up a fight, he relented after a moment. "We're at a deep space facility known as Quondar. It's non-aligned. That's to say, you don't come here unless there's nowhere else you can go. The port's in Orion space. They tolerate it... for certain financial considerations."

Brecht waited for Chekov to precede him onto the bridge.

Morgain was shutting down the bridge stations. It looked like she'd been doing some repair work on the communications console.

"Ooooo," she winced, immediately crossing to Chekov and taking him by the chin. "Not the face... not his sweet little angel face."

Chekov folded his arms and stood his ground, refusing to be intimidated by her. "As though you care."

"Oh, I do, though." She ran both forefingers in parallel lines down his chest. "I'm absolutely frantic to see if he left any ugly marks on the rest of your precious little body."

Brecht rolled his eyes as he pushed between them on his way to the Science console. "I'm afraid I still don't understand the secret of your appeal, Admiral. I'm beginning to fear that it's something in the air and that soon I'll come down with it and be drooling over you like the rest of this lot."

"Don't knock it until you've tried it, Stu." Morgaine grinned as she put her hands around the ensign's waist.

Chekov was in the middle of pulling away when the door to the corridor opened revealing Khwaja.

The supposed Intelligence Officer leaned against the frame of the door. "I found us an engineer. A good one."

He moved aside to let the engineer enter the bridge. Mr. Scott raised his eyebrows at the sight of Chekov and grinned broadly. "Ah, now lad. I didn't expect to see you here."

* * *

Chekov opened his mouth and nothing came out. He wanted to say so many things, he couldn't prioritize. Scott stepped into the breach for him.

"When I woke up on your ship, Mr. Brecht, and my old friend, Bardon Goudchaux suggested I join him in looking for a little Orion gold, I thought to myself, well, I've got two weeks leave. Why not?"

Chekov's mouth stayed open. Scott might have leave, but four hundred and thirty-six other people, not to mention himself, had probably had their leave plans unilaterally cancelled.

"After all," the engineer continued cheerfully, "it's not often you get the chance to take up with old friends and pastimes."

Chekov shut his mouth, since to open it any wider would invite ridicule.

"And I see you've decided to come along for the ride, Mr. Chekov?"

"I... I was kidnapped, Mr. Scott," Chekov explained disbelievingly. "I am not here of my own free will."

Scott smiled indulgently. "I cannae believe you'd pass up the chance of a great adventure like this one, lad, especially when I can see you're already good friends with our companions."

The ensign realized that Moray Morgain's hands were still ticklishly encircling his waist.

"I'm no pirate," he insisted indignantly, disentangling himself and holding out his arms for emphasis. "And these people are no friends of mine."

"He's such a serious one," Scott apologized to the pirates as he stepped forward and deftly did whatever was necessary to remove the cuffs. For some reason he put them in his pocket. "Can ye not take a joke, Mr. Chekov?"

Scott, the ensign now noticed, was even further out of uniform than himself. The engineer had on Orion-style loose fitting black pants and tunic. Obviously he'd raided Brecht's wardrobe. The baggy cut accommodated the difference in size. Seeing him like that, Chekov found it less difficult to believe Goudchaux's insinuations about the Scotsman's past. That thought raised another question...

"Where are Goudchaux, and Chen?" Brecht asked for him.

Scott smiled slyly. Chekov felt his jaw relax again and clamped it shut. He'd gotten used to thinking of the engineer as almost an extension of the _Enterprise_ — occasionally bloody-minded but not a player in his own right. Now he seemed to be moving into the spotlight, metamorphosing into a principal — and a disconcertingly villainous one.

"They were — detained." In response to the universal expressions of dissatisfaction that greeted this evasion, he continued. "Goudchaux was having problems with the warp drive phasing on your ship, Brecht. Nearly shook the crystals to splinters. But I was able to sort him out and get him here for repairs. He was so grateful, he... allowed me to get control of the sweet lady. So here I am."

"Isn't it..." Chekov began.

"...a strange coincidence, that two ships of entirely different design should start experiencing misphasing while you're aboard, Scott?" Brecht shot Chekov a look that said 'I'll ask the questions.'

"Occasional coincidences are evidence that the laws of chance are operating properly," the engineer said, savoring one of Spock's aphorisms and somehow making it sound thoroughly Gaelic.

Brecht smiled but somehow Chekov didn't think he meant it.

Khwaja, impatient with small-talk, pushed past Morgain to confront Brecht. "He's got Goudchaux locked up on the _'Beauty_, Brecht. We can unload him here or take him with us. Trouble with leaving him is, he knows as much as we do. We'd be able to keep an eye on him easier if he was on board. He could get another ship..."

"Paying for it with what?" Brecht objected. "He'll have to have up-front money in a port like this."

Morgain shrugged. "You know Goudchaux, Stu. He'll have something on someone."

Brecht took in a deep breath. "All right. We take Goudchaux and Chen — but they stay locked in the hold. I'm willing to confer with them and maybe even split with them, but I'm not anxious to wind up with Bardon Goudchaux's knife nestled between my shoulder blades."

There was no rebuttal to this from his crew.

"Come on, Admiral," Brecht said, taking the ensign by his shoulder. "It's time for you to get back to your old quarters too."

"But you said..." Chekov protested.

"Then maybe I've changed my mind," Brecht said sharply.

Chekov backed away towards Scott. "Leave me here," he demanded. "At this port."

"Like hell." Moray Morgain laughed derisively. "You don’t know what you’re asking for, sweetheart. This is Quondar. You might think you can sashay your sweet Starfleet self up to the nearest comm station and rat us all out to the Federation, but trust me, angel, you’ll be dead before you can..." A suspicious look came over her features as she turned back to Scott. “Oh, now it all starts to make sense… Our brand new friend here didn’t find Quondar to be a very friendly port of call, did he?”

Scott refused to acknowledge this line of speculation with anything other than a frown and a dangerous narrowing of his eyes. He turned to Brecht. “Do you want my help or nae?”

“We need an engineer,” the freebooter stated as argument to his fellow pirates.

Upon obtaining grudging nods of agreement from them, he held out hand for Scott to shake.

“What about the boy?” Khwaja asked.

“Push him out the airlock for all I care,” the engineer growled as he headed off for the engine room, his voice holding a dismissive coldness the ensign hadn't heard since he'd been banished from Engineering for fouling up the Scotsman's still.

"Mr. Scott!"

"Come on, Admiral." The freebooter placed a hand on his shoulder. "No need to waste time on fond farewells."

Scott didn't even spare the ensign so much as a backwards glance before the 'lift doors closed between them.

"Well," Brecht shook his head. "That was a nasty surprise, wasn't it?"

Chekov didn't answer. He tried to collect himself. Despite his convincing performance as a pirate, the ensign knew Scott had to be carrying out a plan of some sort... He had to be... The alternative was unthinkable.

"Brace yourself, lad," Brecht said, drawing out his small phaser-like weapon almost casually. "Here comes another one."

* * *

When he awoke, Chekov found himself lying in what looked like a very small room in a Turkish harem. Brightly colored pillows were scattered about the carpeted floor. The walls were upholstered in a vivid red material with purple and gold patterns running through it. Other than these exotic details, the chamber was no different to the cell he'd been confined in on Goudchaux's ship. Like that room, his new home had no apparent exit. "Where am I?"

"I can think of a better question." Brecht's voice sounded like it was being filtered through an intercom and coming from... the ceiling?

Looking up, Chekov saw the freebooter's smiling face on a screen above him. A very logical design, really. The ceiling was high enough that an average-sized occupant of this cell could do nothing more harmful than throw pillows at it. The ensign could now see from the tears in the material on the walls that a previous prisoner — a five-fingered being with very sharp fingernails from the looks of it — had made a valiant effort to do more. "Brecht, what am I doing here?"

"Very little," the other man replied easily. "Welcome to the _Black Beauty_, Admiral. You're in the guest room. Sorry about the poor condition of the decor, but the last guest entertained here was a lovely little Orion lass who was even less happy with the accommodations than you seem to be."

"Mr. Brecht..." Chekov began hotly, sitting up.

"The better question that I was thinking of," the freebooter interrupted, "is what has happened to your old friend Mr. Scott? Why has he suddenly stopped being the loyal, upstanding officer you believed him to be?"

Chekov crossed his arms. This was a rather good question. "I suppose he approves of you imprisoning me here," he replied sourly.

"Frankly, he doesn't know... at least not yet. I have employed a neat little trick of Goudchaux's to convince him and our other two friends that I put you in the stasis box back on that ship. Don't look so glum, Admiral. The box is probably the safest place on that vessel. You'd probably survive even if the ship blew up around you."

There was something to what the freebooter was saying. Despite the harshness of his words and actions, Scott hadn't actually done anything to endanger him.

"You see the problem," Brecht continued. "Whether or not your friend Scott has fallen from the path of righteousness, , I can see that in your heart of hearts you don't believe he has. Therefore he still has in you a strong potential ally. All he has to do is convince you that he's still on the side of the angels and you'll follow him loyally to the end. That gives him an advantage over the rest of us who have no one we can trust."

"But you and Miss Morgain are... were... friends?"

Brecht rolled his eyes. "Miss Morgain and I are friends in about the same way that you and she are friends. Moray's become a little eccentric about physical intimacy. I know her story. I know why she does the things she does, but that doesn't make me like them... or her. Let me give you a clue, Admiral. Despite what she said to us on the bridge, I know she's not just in this for the money."

Chekov frowned. He had gotten the feeling all along that Brecht and Morgain were communicating things between themselves that they weren't saying aloud.

"I, on the other hand," Brecht continued, "am in this for the money and only the money. That's why you should trust me. I don't give a tinker's damn about the Orlan Du and their treasure, but I've got to return something to the people who sent me here with that cursed shard... and it's pretty obvious that I'm not going to be bringing them your Mr. Scott as planned."

Chekov bit his lip. All of what the freebooter had said seemed like the truth, but after the last several days with the pirates, it made him very nervous for people to start telling him things that sounded like the truth.

"This is my plan," Brecht said. "You said we needed two ships to find the treasure. Fine. We have two ships now. Khwaja doesn't think you can think up anything that I couldn't on my own. Fine. You tell me your ideas and they become my own. We find this damned treasure and split the proceeds. If your Mister Scott is only playing a little game with us, he'll want you back. In that case, I'll take the liberty of using you to negotiate my own safe return. If he's truly turned on you, then I'll see you back to Federation territory myself — minus a few useless memories — and none of them on the other ship need be any the wiser. Now, you couldn't ask a fairer deal than that, could you?"

Chekov didn't reply. He looked at the brightly colored padded walls of his cell. If Brecht was in the habit of smuggling sentient cargo, it was likely this room would be shielded from conventional sensors in some way. He had no way of communicating with Scott... if he even wanted to communicate with Scott...

"Come on, Admiral," Brecht said soothingly. "Just tell me what those numbers mean."

Chekov shook his head slowly. "I need to think."

"Oh, well." The freebooter sighed and manipulated a few controls off screen. "I suppose there's no need to rush you. You've had a trying day."

The lights in the chamber began to dim. There was a hissing noise from the unseen air ducts.

"Brecht..." Chekov began uncertainly. A sweet odor filled the little room. It didn't smell like a conventional tranquilizer, however... "Brecht, I warn you... if... you... try..."

"Good night, Admiral," the freebooter said as the ensign fell back among the pillows.


	7. Chapter 7

Chekov was awakened by a loud buzzing noise. He immediately noted to his displeasure that he was still in the padded red cell on Brecht's ship. The noise seemed to be coming from everywhere at once and getting progressively louder. The ensign pressed his hands to his ears and vainly looked for the source. As he did so, the noise suddenly stopped.

"Well, you're certainly a sound sleeper." Brecht's voice came from the viewscreen on the ceiling. "I'll give you that. And not much of one for talking in your sleep."

"Brecht!" Chekov's short term memory suddenly focused. "You drugged me."

"Just a touch of Tanctin to loosen your tongue," the freebooter replied, smiling his familiar ironic smile. His eyes, however, were colder than usual. "For all the good it did either of us."

Tanctin was a sodium pentothal derivative often used by interrogators. It was used so regularly, in fact, that the ensign had undergone training that practically guaranteed he wouldn't succumb to it.

"I figure I failed to get any information out of you for either of two reasons," Brecht theorized. "First, it could be a little Tanctin isn't enough to put the grease to an Academy boy's tongue. This being the case, I began to think perhaps I should renew my friendship with my old chum Chen."

The ensign swallowed. He had less confidence in the superiority of Command training over Goudchaux's henchman's impressive array of interrogation equipment. At the very least, he was absolutely certain he wanted no part in the experiment.

"The second possibility," Brecht continued, "is that you really don't know anything. You've just been playing me for a fool. The babbling I did manage to get out of you tends to support this second conclusion."

Chekov decided it was best to remain silent.

"Now let me tell you, my young friend." Brecht's assumed geniality was assuming a harsher edge by the minute. "No one makes a fool of Stuart Brecht without regretting it. I have a soft place in my heart for innocent bystanders... but you're neither, even if you think you are at the moment. I'm a breath away from being at the end of my patience with you. I've considered turning you over to Chen just for my own amusement. I've even thought of transferring you to Goudchaux's cell just to see how long you'd last."

Despite the considerations for his safety the freebooter had demonstrated in the past, there was no doubting he meant these threats quite literally.

"Now, if you don't fancy seeing yourself carved up like a Christmas goose, you'd better be straight with me."

Chekov chewed his lower lip. "I need more information before I can draw any reliable conclusions," he admitted slowly.

Brecht blew a long breath out through his nose. "Somehow I had the feeling you'd say something like that. Another bit of worm to keep the greedy fish snapping at the empty hook, eh? What sort of information?”

"I need to know more about flight capabilities, sensor technology, political alignments..."

A panel in the wall opposite him slid open, revealing an unfamiliar electronic device linked up clumsily to a cheap translator with a small screen.

"This is all I have to give you," Brecht said as the ensign picked the assemblage up.

The display, when he'd activated the unit, looked like a book cover with all the lettering slid down to one side. Chekov puzzled it out. "_The Child's Nursery Book of Tales of the Orlan Du_? You must be joking."

"It's more than it looks," Brecht assured him. "Read on."

"This facsimile reproduction of a near-contemporary account of the adventures of the Orlan Du has been annotated by Teacher Markris Golton, a lifelong student of the actual physical artefacts of the time of the Orlan Du," the ensign read aloud. "He has taken great pains to render these accounts comprehensible to the modern Orion child."

"I figured you were at least on that level."

"Brecht." Chekov spread his hands. "This isn't going to begin to..."

"Let me be frank with you," the freebooter interrupted sharply. "You don't have the time or indulgence left with me to argue about it. I'll give you a few hours with this, but at the end of that time, you will have your one final chance to give me conclusive proof that you are worth keeping alive. Do I make myself clear?"

The ensign nodded resignedly. "Quite clear."

"Right." Brecht pressed another control and a second panel opened on a tray of food. "Here's something for you, if you're hungry. The sanitary facilities are... Well, since you're such a clever lad, I'll let you find them yourself. Study hard."

After the screen above him went dark, Chekov twisted his wrist inside one of his manacles to try and see if there was some way of inputting the codes he had read on their inner surface. If only Mr. Scott had been able to give him some clue, some reassurance that he could sit back and let the engineer make the next move... But he hadn't. Scott hadn't made any sort of effort to do so. Chekov had to assume he was on his own. Whatever the engineer was doing, he probably hadn't expected the ensign to be dragged into the equation.

The navigator had to believe that Scott was just playing a role with the pirates. To imagine that his superior officer was joining in with their villainy in earnest was simply unacceptable despite how convincing his act had seemed.

The Russian chewed his lip discontentedly. The engineer’s performance had seemed _quite_ convincing to him. He marveled that Scott had so adamantly let the chance to set him free on the space station pass them by. What flaw there might be in that very obvious solution to all their current troubles was absolutely beyond him…

The ensign also wondered about the location of Goudchaux’s little ship. He remembered the distress code he’d programmed into the ship’s engines and wondered if that vessel had reached the necessary speed to trigger transmission yet.

For the moment, though, it looked like there was nothing for the navigator to do other than read Brecht's fairy tale book. He picked the viewer up with a sigh and activated the top panel.

“Felicitations, young ones,” the flickering image of fat, bald, fantastically attired Orion greeted him. “Let us begin our celebration of the glorious history of the Orlan Du by reciting together your favorite ballad…”

“Mighty and bold were their deeds,” a chorus of Orion children recited gleefully. “Dark and fierce were their needs.”

“Terror they struck into the hearts of their foes,” Chekov delightedly chanted along with them, finding that it _was_ one of his favorite ballads. “Terror they spread as they come and they g…”

The reader dropped to the pillows from the Russian’s suddenly numb fingers.

How in the hell had he known the words to that poem?

Taking in a deep breath, the ensign switched off the reader, touching the device as carefully as he would a coiled cobra. 

The poem he knew was not an ancient Orion ballad about space pirates, but a piece of 19th or 20th century narrative poetry by a Russian writer named Kaminsky. He had memorized it when he was eight years old. It wasn’t what one might call a literary classic of any sort. But he and his best friend had picked it because it was relatively short but packed with lots of appropriately lurid sea pirate-ish details. One summer, they had prepared a performance of the verses for their parents’ edification.

It was a coincidence beyond all calculation that the Orions would come up with an identical opening for one of their traditional sagas.

Unnerved, the ensign shook his head and reached for a glass of fruit juice on the tray of food that Brecht had provided. After blinking at the red satin walls as his mind searched for rational explanations for several moments, he finally had to conclude there were none.

He picked the reader back up and pressed the control that would allow him to skip this mind-bogglingly inexplicable introduction and move on to whatever mysteries lay in the body of the text.

“Now, dear ones,” Teacher Markris Golton’s smiling visage filled the screen. “Now to the Tales of the Orlan Du. Which stout-hearted brother suits you best? Are you cunning? Wise? Fortunate in your choices? Choose your favorite tale as a lodestar to guide you.”

After this introduction, the legend of the Orlan Du unfolded, as Chekov expected, with a series of fantastical and largely contradictory adventures of the three brothers. They appeared to be rogues, heroes and comedians by turns. Each episode was told from a different point of view.

Chekov guessed that this was more or less an anthology of folk tales from the early days of Orion space capability. It seemed strange. Records of the equivalent, shorter period in Earth history were very complete. Orion culture, though, was less stable, less based on information, and more clannish and partisan.

He found some stories that his previous experience with dry and dusty archaeological volumes on the treasure would have never lead him to expect — for example, the section on “The Amusing Adventures of the Talented Slave Boys of the Orlan Du.” The Orions, it seems, had felt it culturally appropriate to gift their heroes with a pair of bumbling Sancho Panzas who served as their bridge crew.

They had anachronistically cast these servants as Humans — which was absolutely preposterous since it would be easily five hundred years until even the Vulcans penetrated deep enough into Orion territories to serve as suitable victims.

Some sort of latter day, tacked-on political propaganda, obviously, the ensign decided. And in very poor taste, too, judging from the rather risqué tone of the titles which the navigator did not feel were very appropriate for the young readers of such a volume… or Starfleet ensigns for that matter…

Deciding to skip these introductory tales, he paged forward, looking for the real story to begin with the theft of the treasure.

Now, the Orlan Du seemed transformed. While up to this point the brothers had been devious and quick to take advantage of weaker victims, they'd been limited to the technology of their era. Now, they seemed to have acquired a ship that was faster than those of all the other warlords — more maneuverable, impervious to attack and capable of vanishing at a moment's notice.

The reader threw some light on the treasures, too. Jewels, ancient family treasures plundered from Orions and aliens alike, were lavishly described. There were also mentions of mysterious alien artifacts with useful and irreproducible capabilities. Devices that would revive the dead, magical elixirs, transporters, a propulsion system faster than the Orion's primitive proto-warp drive, weapons... Even taken with a pinch of salt, it rather looked as if the Orlan Du might have stumbled at some time on the wreckage of an advanced space-craft and plundered it for saleable technology. That, after all, would explain their own ship's increased abilities.

The ensign paused the reader as Teacher Golton was in the midst of what seemed to him to be a rather hypocritical rant dismissing something he called the “D’Sanari Mine carvings” as mere “blasphemous Andorian cant.”

It was interesting, comforting even, that all this was beginning to sound like something Chekov could imagine that Starfleet would have an interest in. Putting Khwaja/Hanton in place to monitor the first rumors that someone was trying to reassemble the medallion... Letting Scott get involved, both as bait to bring Brecht in and as support for their undercover agent at a later stage... Whether Chekov's involvement had been deliberate or accidental, it was all beginning to make a tortured sort of sense.

Activating the reader again, he located a brief section on the medallion's history. The three brothers seemed to have traded their part of the secret for their lives in some encounter with the aggrieved owners of the stolen treasure. It wasn't clear whether the Orion lords had kept their side of the bargain: the brothers were simply never heard from again.

What puzzled Chekov greatly was that these individuals could trust each other through a complex and risky jewel heist and then apparently no further. It didn't make sense. Had there been a falling out, a betrayal, that made the medallion necessary?

The ensign scratched his head and frowned. Completely foolish and utterly impossible… But what if there _were_ two Humans involved in these thefts? Not as slaves — as the Orions would arrogantly and ethnocentrically assume — but as partners?

If two of the Orlan Du were humanoid, then perhaps he wasn't overly optimistic as he tried to recreate what he would have done in their position and apply it to the numbers. The two weren't Terran humans, obviously, but leaving that aside for the moment, he'd have given a location with reference to Earth... If he could work out the likely home planet of the two humanoids loose in Orion space three thousand years ago — along with a radio signal that would bring the treasure inside its capsule to him once he got to the specified location... Easy.

He had to translate the reference system they used to give a location and then identify which was the reference and which the radio signal. He took the easy option for the moment, just to check that it could work. The first two numbers were the location, according to the system he used every day as a Starfleet navigator. The third, his birthday, could then be the radio signal. After all, you couldn't very well choose a location that happened to coincide with your birthday, but a radio signal could be generated to fit any given set of numbers: the first three digits giving the frequency in megahertz, the last six the binary code which would activate the pod containing the treasure. He idly worked out the location. It turned out, as near as he could tell, plumb in the middle of Orion space.

Chekov felt a tiny thrill of excitement, then shook his head at himself. He was getting as desperate and gullible as the pirates. That system of bearings hadn't been invented three hundred years ago, let alone three thousand. It was just a coincidence. Like the inclusion of his birthday.

He went back to the text. The book was silent on the final fate of the treasure of the Orlan Du. A brief postscript by Teacher Golton linked the fable to the contemporaneous Orion Wars of Treachery, in which the great houses had ceased their tradition of cooperation and begun fighting amongst themselves. Popular belief was that the five shards were the cause of the trouble although historians preferred theories of economic pressures and excessively expansionist policies.

Chekov switched the reader off and took the tray of now very cold food out of the still open chute. He sat down on the cushions and picked unenthusiastically at his congealed food. The question now was what to tell Brecht. The Orlan Du — whatever else one might say against them — trusted one another. That much was apparent from their conduct prior to the theft. Therefore it was probable that the medallion was a blind. That might even have been the main point of the exercise — a deliberate device to wreck the delicate alliance of Orion houses that kept both jealous outsiders and impatient younger sons from realizing their ambitions.

Chekov doubted that Brecht was going to be pleased to hear that — other than inspiring a brief flight of fantasy on his part — the text contained no clues to the whereabouts of the treasure, and that the warlords who had captured the brothers had probably recovered it thousands of years ago. When one looked at the evidence objectively, it was quite plausible that the treasure of the Orlan Du was nothing more than an elaborate hoax.

However, like the miller's daughter in the fairy tale, the ensign was now trapped by his own reckless boasting. Instead of one greedy king, Chekov had seven pirates waiting for him to turn straw into gold.

He nearly dropped his tray in surprise when one of the walls of his prison slid unexpectedly open. Esme, about whom he'd nearly forgotten, was standing in the revealed doorway. Her large, round, green eyes roamed over his cell. "Thought I'd find you in the bridal suite," she said dryly.

Chekov carefully closed his mouth and took a deep breath. "What do you want?"

"To do you a little favor, dearie," the medic replied, tossing him a bundle. "Change into these."

It turned out to be clothing — stolen from Brecht's closet if one judged by the color and size.

Chekov looked at them blankly. He couldn't figure out what sort of torture this was a prelude to. "Why should I?"

"Because I'm going to let you go.” She generously gestured toward the doorway with one of her claw-like hands.

"Why?" Chekov repeated cautiously, although he was encouraged enough to begin to shoulder out of Khwaja's outsize cast-off and into Brecht's.

"Because Richard asked me to," she replied cryptic smile. "And asked me nicely."

The ensign froze. “Who’s Richard?”

“If you come back,” she promised, leaning in conspiratorially, “I’ll tell you. If not, it hardly matters, does it?”

Looking into her eyes, Chekov decided there was a good possibility that the woman was completely insane and “Richard” was what she’d named her Bunsen-burner.

"They may kill you for this, you know," the ensign pointed out, changing into a baggy pair of maroon-colored trousers.

She shrugged. "I'm dying anyway."

He cinched his borrowed pants in as tightly as he could with the wide belt she'd provided. With a red nose, he reflected, he'd be able to blend in with any passing circus. Looking down, he remembered his manacles. Somehow, he didn't fancy starting off his new life in Orion space looking like a refugee from an S & M tri-D. "What about these?"

"Of course. Come here." She reached out and clicked the bonds off his wrists, then knelt and did the same for his ankles.

"How does that work?"

"Anyone else can pull them open," she explained. "If you're wearing them, you can't."

"What about making them magnetic?"

"You need a remote. Or access to the security system on Goudchaux's_ Nell_." A smile crossed the older woman's face as she examined the cuffs. "Looks like you missed a trick here."

"What?"

"Never mind," she replied, discarding them. "We have to hurry."

"How did you know I wasn't in stasis?" he asked as he followed her into the corridor of Brecht's ship.

"Mm? Because I've worked that particular trick for Goudchaux a hundred times. Now, don't hang about when I let you out. Goudchaux's _Nell _is docked in the same bay as this one. Brecht only let me come over here because I convinced him I needed some medical supplies that would cost an arm and a leg on the station."

She led him as far as the docking lock and unfastened the hatch for him.

Chekov hesitated. "I... I'm not sure about this... Mr. Scott..."

The old woman smiled. A genuine smile looked oddly unfamiliar on her. "Don't worry about our Monty. I'll take care of him. Now, off you go. Hurry."

The hatch was swinging open. Tantalizing, frightening freedom beckoned through the widening gap.

Still he paused and turned back to the medic with a frown. "What do you mean?"

"Stop asking questions," she said, giving him a little push forward, "and go!"

Chekov found himself outside in the docking tunnel with the hatch closing on him. A dozen things he still needed to know lay on the other side, but there seemed to be no turning back now. He moved cautiously forward, since that was the only direction open to him. The ensign was not at all sure that this was where he wanted to be. As little as he trusted the man, Khwaja's threats and hints about this port were echoing ominously inside his brain. Mr. Scott didn’t seem to think it was a good idea for him to be here and “Richard” —whoever that might be — did.

There was, however, no point in standing around waiting to be recaptured. He'd get in contact with Starfleet and/or get away from this place as quickly as possible.

Chekov squared his shoulders and set off down the corridor that served the various docking bays in this sector at a brisk pace. He was relieved to see that Stuart Brecht's bird of paradise taste in clothing was nothing unusual here. No one gave a young Human so attired a second glance. The ensign was almost beginning to feel at ease as he made his way towards the hub of what he correctly guessed was a concentrically arranged space station of considerable size and population.

The scale and look of the place surprised him. Far from being the filthy den of unspeakable vice he'd been led to expect, the port seemed quite civilized. The passageways were clean and well-kept. The recycled air was fresher than on a few Federation-run deep space stations he'd visited.

The broad corridors eventually brought him to a large, well-used concourse.

When Chekov paused to take stock, a hand came down on his shoulder. He didn't understand the question that went along with this gesture. It was asked in Orion. The ensign took the precaution of smiling apologetically at the ominously large uniformed guard who had asked it. "I'm sorry. I don't speak..."

"Who are you with?" The guard switched effortlessly to Standard, implying that this station saw a significant stream of spacefarers from outside Orion territory. Another good sign.

"Who am I with?" Chekov repeated uncomprehendingly. "Other than you?"

"Oh, a wise guy, huh?" The guard smiled unpleasantly. "Come on, where's your ticket?"

"My ticket?" Chekov realized with a sudden panic that he had absolutely no identification of any kind on him.

The guard regarded him critically. "You don't look like you're paying for your own water and air."

"Well, you see... my ship is docked for repairs. I was only..."

"Which ship?" the guard demanded implacably.

This was another question without an easy answer. "Well, uhm... it's the... uh..."

"Having problems with your memory, huh?" the Orion asked sympathetically. "Or is it something else? Like, maybe you jumped ship?"

Chekov was getting the feel that his taste of freedom was about to be choked off after a mere nibble. "Well, uhm..."

"Fifty credits and I'll let you turn around and walk back where you came from," the guard offered.

"That's very generous of you, I'm sure, but unfortunately..."

"Oh, I see." The guard took Chekov by the right arm while he drew a pair of Orion-style security cuffs from one of his pockets. "In that case..."

"But, officer... I have not... that is, if you will only allow me to..."

"So, you've jumped ship?" the Orion said amiably as he fastened the cuffs around Chekov's wrists. "Then welcome to Quondar. No currency for facilities? No problem. We'll find you work. Just come with me."

"But, I..." the navigator began, but then decided he was only wasting breath. There was no use talking until he could come up with a reasonable explanation of some sort.

The guard twisted his stun stick through the linking chain a couple of times, then pulled the unwilling ensign with him through the thickening crowd.

Chekov racked his brains for a plausible story he could use to get himself out of this situation. The only thing that occurred to him though, was how utterly humiliating it was to be paraded down a public thoroughfare in restraints like a common criminal. It didn't matter to him that no one seemed to be taking any particular note.

The bright corridors gave way to poorly maintained and lighted passageways that were filled with a babble of unhappy sounding voices.

"Come on." The burly Orion transferred his grip to the back of Chekov's collar and guided him less than gently into a small office.

A jaded-looking Orion who might have been roughly Chekov's age sat behind the room's only desk. He was perusing the text accompanying the small holographic still of a young, voluptuous, unclad Orion female in a rather unlikely situation with two Tellarites that was being projected from the tiny reader that sat to one side of a larger computer terminal on his desk.

"Sit," Chekov's captor ordered, pushing him down into a chair.

"Name?" The Orion behind the desk barely glanced up as he flipped off the reader and activated the main computer terminal.

"Pa... ah. I mean, uhm..." Chekov stopped himself from automatically giving his correct name. The pirates had little more than that and a general description to go on if they were to try to locate him.

"He's having problems with his memory," the guard explained for him. "He can't even remember the name of the ship he jumped."

The younger Orion gave him a disdainful look. "Well, the poor stupid bastard. So what do you want me to put down? Pa-ah-I-mean-uhm?"

"Peterson," Chekov lied, meeting the man's gaze evenly. There were, after all, limits to what these Security men could do to him — as corrupt as they seemed to be. Despite the way he was being treated, he was no criminal and if he kept his mouth closed, there was little to connect him to Goudchaux or Brecht's ships. The most it seemed they could prosecute him for was vagrancy.

His interviewer smiled. "And I thought it was going to be Smith. Okay, Peterson, how long have you been here?"

'Definitely vagrancy,' Chekov decided. That wasn't so bad. Such a minor offence wouldn't carry a sentence of more than a few days of incarceration or punitive work assignments. His heart sank at the prospect of spending time in an Orion jail cell... and for vagrancy of all things; a charge of drunk and disorderly he might have borne better. Vagrancy was so unworthy of a Starfleet officer... At any rate, such a fate had to be better than what he was running away from. Anything would be. "Not so long."

"How many days of air and water do you owe?" the officer clarified.

Ten minutes' worth was the sensible answer. The only problem was that the truth might narrow down the number of ships he could have come from in the event they were determined to send him back. "Uhm...two days."

"We'll just round that up to a five-day," the Orion said, typing rapidly. "Okay, Peterson?"

"But I..."

"Any contraband to declare? Communicable diseases? Been to any indexed worlds in the last nine periods?"

"No..."

"Okay." The Orion slid a sheet of thin plastic with a few lines of Orion script on it across the table. "Right palm on the bottom of the page, Peterson."

In case these instructions were too much for Chekov to process, the guard who had brought him here considerately jerked one of the ensign's hands into place with his palm pressed flat against the matt surface.

"What is this?" Chekov asked as the sheet warmed briefly, taking a permanent record of his print.

"Just an identity record, Peterson," the interviewer explained, retrieving it with an ersatz smile. "So that when we find your body, we'll know not to charge you for any more air."

Chekov tried to cheat the Orion out of any indication that he had been in the least bit unnerved by that last statement... but wasn't entirely sure he succeeded.

"Right." The interviewer fed the sheet into a scanner. "Unauthorized entrant 00064783. You have thirty days in which to find an employer who will pay your life support. During that time you will be available for hire at all times to pay off your debt to the Station for un-ticketed air and water. At the end of the grace period, you are liable to summary deportation."

"Deportation?" Chekov repeated. "To where?"

"Off the Station, Peterson." The interviewer shrugged as he closed the file and deactivated his terminal. "It's up to you where you go after that."

"Yeah." The other Security man grinned ghoulishly as he hauled Chekov to his feet. "Most of them just... hang around outside, if you catch my drift." The Orion laughed. "Hey, did you get that? Drift... That was a good one, wasn't it?"

"Right." The interviewer jerked one thumb towards the door as he flicked his tiny holo-projector on again. "Put him in the cage."

* * *

The 'cage' was a large security cell. It looked like it was designed to comfortably hold about twenty men. It also looked like it was now accommodating nearer to fifty. Half a dozen Klingons laid in expansive postures of sleep on the benches around the wall. The more timorous races had resigned themselves to standing or sitting on the floor. Chekov counted about fifteen humans — most were mature males with nondescript, weathered features. There were also Orions, Andorians, Tellarites and a single green-tinged alien who could have been a Vulcan or a Romulan.

The shove that the guard used to propel Chekov into the cell sent the ensign stumbling into a group of Andorians squatting near the entrance.

"Excuse m..." Before the apology was past his lips, two of the Andorians violently shoved him towards a seated group of Humans, causing him to trip over something — or someone — and sprawl head-first into their midst.

His fellow beings received him eagerly. Moving like a well-coordinated unit, several of them held his arms and legs while others went through every pocket in his clothes including a few he hadn't even suspected were there.

"Already been turned over today," one of his new roommates complained.

"Or maybe he stashed it before he was caught," another opined.

Pinning his arms in a brutal full-Nelson, the human in whose hands he'd ended pulled Chekov up into a seated position facing a grizzled male of perhaps sixty, whose grey-brown complexion looked unwashed rather than tanned.

"Hello, new boy," this man greeted him. "Where did you stash your gold? Didn't they warn you to keep enough to pay when you got in here?"

"Pay?" Chekov gasped, struggling to regain his breath. "For what?"

"In here, you have to pay Smith for protection." The man tapped his chest and smiled. "And I'm Smith."

Chekov surveyed the hardened faces around him resentfully. This station was certainly a dreadfully expensive place. One couldn't even rot in jail for free. "I don't have any gold. I would not be here if I had access to any currency."

"Well, that's too bad." Smith drew a small knife out of his ragged clothing. At his signal, one of his comrades pulled the ensign's head up, exposing his throat. "You'll find that in here..." Smith traced a light line across Chekov's jugular. "...protection is a useful — although expensive — service. Something you just won't be able to live without, understand?"

"I understand," Chekov choked quietly.

"The next time you're out, you'll remember to bring back a little for old Smith, won't you?"

"Yes," Chekov replied, careful not to jostle the blade. "Certainly."

"Yeah." Smith tucked his knife back into his clothing and drew back his fist. "You'll remember."

Held as he was, there was nothing Chekov could do but turn his head so the blow would catch him on the left cheek. The next landed on his jaw. Smith's comrades continued to restrain him long enough afterwards to make sure the ensign remembered that he was outnumbered by at least fifteen to one and that he knew for certain that at least one of those fifteen was armed. When he was finally released, Chekov swiped at his nose, realizing too late that he smeared blood across his face by doing so. The cut on his lip had also reopened.

He wondered if it were only that knife that gave Smith the right to be Godfather of this gulag mafia. If he had any real power, it was unlikely that he'd be sitting on the floor, letting the Klingons hog bench space. Smith was at the centre of the group of Humans. Perhaps his power was limited to that species. The ensign wondered if he'd fare better among aliens — or even at the boundaries of Smith's little empire. Not that it mattered. He didn't intend to stay here long or ever come back.

"Now." Smith sat back on his heels. "Since you can't pay, what else can you do?"

"Back off! Back off!" The call echoed in several languages as a group of armed guards entered the cell. Inmates dodged the guards' studded boots as best they could as a few of them waded into the prisoners' midst and began hauling individuals to their feet.

"You, outside." One of the guards jerked a man a few paces away from the ensign up by the arm and shoved him towards the door. "And you... and you..."

Chekov held his breath as the Orion paused, surveying the group. It was hard to tell if it were better to go or stay in this case.

"You too." Almost as an afterthought, the guard grabbed the ensign and pushed him after the others.

Chekov was the last prisoner to exit before the energy barrier was re-activated. He and the others were lined up for inspection along the wall beside the cell. A woman in a skin-tight one-piece suit with a mirrored surface stood eyeing the ragged assemblage before her critically. Glancing down the row, the ensign realized that all of the younger human males had been pulled for her inspection.

She sniffed disdainfully. "Is this the best you can offer?"

"Hey, you know what time it is. All the good ones have already been hired out," the guard next to Chekov replied, then pushed the ensign forward by his shoulder. "This one's new."

Realizing that this was a prospective employer, Chekov self-consciously swiped at his bloody nose again and tried to look presentable. At her nod, he was escorted forward. Her eyes traveled slowly up and down his body. He gave her a careful, encouraging smile around his swollen lip.

"And what are you able to do?" she asked unsmilingly. "Anything useful? I need someone to move some cargo and clean up the holds. Are you a hard worker?"

"Yes, ma..." He stopped himself from giving a military response. "I will work hard."

She turned back to the Orion. "New in? He's pretty desperate to hook up with someone. Are you sure he isn't in line for the airlock?"

"New in today. A full thirty day run. If you want to take him, he's got five days air to pay."

"Ten," another of the guards broke in.

"Oh, yeah. Ten days to pay."

"Yeah, right." The woman rolled her eyes, then turned her back on them and strolled to the head of the line.

Chekov was unceremoniously ushered back to his place. Several of the other potential hirelings reacted as he had, straightening their backs and looking the woman in the eye. Others just slumped, seeming to have given up. By and by, she made her way to the end of the line and her original choice.

"Seven days to pay, you say?" she asked the Orion next to him.

The guard shrugged. "Yeah. That's close enough."

"Okay," the woman replied, then walked away again. This time, however, the guard pushed Chekov forward to follow her. The rest of the men were hustled back into the cage. He and the guard followed the woman out of the detention area and into the Security Station proper. The Orion stopped him from following her into one of the offices. The guard indicated with a shove that he was to wait standing against the opposite wall.

"What will I...?" Chekov ventured after a moment.

"Shut up," the Orion replied.

Taking that as a fairly clear explanation of his current status, the ensign contented himself with waiting quietly, doing what he could to stop the slight bleeding from his lip and nose.

At length the woman reappeared, tucking a credit chip back into her suit and carrying a sheet of plastic. She dismissed the guard with a gold coin, then turned to Chekov. She gave him another long, appraising look and consulted the sheet of plastic. "Peterson, right?"

The ensign was puzzled until he remembered that was his assumed name. "Uh... yes."

She smiled fractionally. "Right," she said, before turning to go.

Chekov followed a few steps behind her. When the doors of the Security Area finally closed behind him, however, he was emboldened enough to close that distance. "Excuse me, ma'am, but... I know this must sound foolish, but I am not sure I understand what my position is. I work for you and you pay the station?"

The woman stopped and smiled at him. It was a very professional smile. "You owe the station... How long have you actually been here? An hour?"

"Yes," he admitted, surprised. Maybe after two or so hours one stopped looking so horrified by all this.

"To get you out of there, I paid off your life support debt plus a bonus for the guards. As long as I pay your daily ticket, I keep you. If I don't, you go back in the cage until someone is willing to clear whatever debts you run up in the meantime. When it gets to thirty days, they lose patience and..."

"Yes." Chekov swallowed. "I know about that."

"Uh-huh. I thought you seemed very willing to be hired."

He shrugged unhappily. "Shifting cargo doesn't sound bad. Is this a long-term position?"

She smiled again. Her smiles were more condescending each time. "There are worse jobs. At least I think so. And no, it isn't. It's just twenty four hours."

Taking what he sincerely hoped was his last look at the security area over his shoulder, the ensign followed his employer into the crowded public corridors of the station. He made a conscious effort not to watch the effect walking had on the reflections in her suit. She was of average height, bald apart from a short blond pigtail at the back of her head, with a honey-colored complexion and brown eyes. She wore a single gold earring in one ear that brought pirates uncomfortably to the ensign's mind.

At length, they entered a turbo lift and travelled upwards in silence. The lift halted but the door remained closed. When she palmed it open, there was nothing outside.

She chuckled patronizingly at his sharp intake of breath.

"Silly," she said, stepping out and turning on the lights. The clear bubble they'd emerged into became effectively opaque. It was just a studio apartment, large and elegantly furnished. Beneath his feet, Chekov was relieved to find a perfectly ordinary carpet. The lift opened out of a solid wall, but opposite and curving up over their heads was uninterrupted clearsteel.

"Go wash your face."

He glanced away from the view and found she was pointing him towards the only other door in the apartment. He didn't like being told what to do like a small boy, but she was the boss. There was no point in losing this job before he even found out exactly what it was.

The bathroom's decor was so chic it took him a minute to figure out how to turn the water on in the sink and a few more to divine how one controlled the temperature. Only after he'd washed most of the dried blood off his face was he brave enough to look at his own reflection.

"How did you get in this condition anyway?" a voice asked, echoing his own thoughts.

He turned quickly. He hadn't expected his employer to invade the bathroom while he was still in there.

"Here." When she pressed a button, a drawer opened in the cabinet beside the sink. From it, she drew a small sponge, reached around him to hold it briefly in the stream of water, then handed it to him. "Use this on your lip."

"Thank you." The sponge had something on it that numbed the pain a little.

"That shirt goes in the processor," the woman ordered, rummaging through her drawer for something else.

"Excuse me?"

"Take off your shirt and put it in the processor," the woman repeated slowly, pointing at a chute in the wall next to him for emphasis. "It'll get the blood out in a few minutes."

"Oh." Finding no legitimate reason why he should not do so, Chekov self-consciously shouldered out of Brecht's shirt and deposited it as directed. When he turned back, the woman was sizing him up with what looked like a practiced eye.

"Lots of bruises," she said, critically. "Most of them fresh."

Chekov shrugged. "I have been living a rather precarious life of late."

"You're a Human, aren't you?" she asked, pulling what he guessed was a small medical instrument out of the drawer. "From where? Earth? One of the Mars Colonies?"

"Earth," he confirmed.

"Right." She made a few adjustments to the device's setting then held it to his cheek. "Hold still."

It seemed strange that a civilian who didn't seem to be a medical practitioner would have a device for repairing bruises that had settings for a range of alien races. Having such an instrument readily at hand seemed to indicate that this woman encountered wounded aliens on a regular basis.

"Thank you." Chekov reached up to intercept the device as she prepared to move to his jaw. "But I think I can..."

"I'll do your face," she insisted, pulling the sealer out of his reach. "You can have it after that."

Despite the fact that the ensign felt less than comfortable standing half-naked with a woman he barely knew about half an inch away, there didn't seem to be any arguing with this. From this close up, it was apparent that she was older than he'd been assuming — maybe in her mid-forties. The mirror suit and the strange hairstyle could have been purposefully chosen to distract attention from her face.

"Better?" she asked, pulling away after a few minutes.

"Yes, thank you." The face in the mirror, despite a few lingering patches of discoloration, was one he now could recognize.

"You still look like you could use some brightening up." The woman opened another drawer. "What's your pleasure? Stardust? Em-tees? Illyssium?"

"Excuse me?"

She held up a small hypo as explanation.

"Oh." Chekov politely turned his attention to treating a large bruise on his right side. "No. No, thank you."

"Suit yourself." The woman dialed a dosage and hissed the hypo into her arm through the mirror fabric. She sighed and closed her eyes for a minute. "Look, whether or not the accent's real, keep it. The clients like that sort of thing. But you've got to drop this wide-eyed act. No one your age is as innocent as you're trying to pretend to be."

"What do you mean?"

"Surely you've caught on to the setup by now. You know what you're here for."

"Actually, I was preparing to inquire..."

"Okay." She dropped the hypo back into its drawer. "The shifting cargo stuff was a smokescreen. I just don't like people knowing my business. Understand?"

"I suppose," Chekov replied slowly.

"The truth is that one of my regulars has gotten into a little trouble. I need someone to handle his bookings."

"Are you..." The ensign paused and cleared his throat. "Are we talking about... uhm... prostitution?"

The woman smiled. "What else did you think we could be talking about?"

Despite everything, he had to laugh. "Are you serious?"

"Do I look serious?"

"Yes." The ensign quickly sobered. "Yes. You look very serious. Ma'am, I am very sorry for this misunderstanding, but I am not... Well, it is simply not a possibility."

The woman crossed her arms. "You said you wanted to work."

"Yes, but not... That is to say, I am looking for something a little more... technical."

"Like what?"

"I am qualified to pilot. I can do some engineering — routine maintenance and tasks of that sort, computer programming, communications..."

"Who do you know?" she interrupted.

"What?"

"Who have you got here to recommend you?" she clarified. "You can't get jobs like those without recommendations. In a port like this one, no one hires someone they don't know. Have you got contacts here?"

"No."

"Then the only kind of work you're going to get on this station is what I'm offering. Drifters like you are disposable — not worth the air it takes to keep you alive."

"You can't be serious," he argued. "I am not unskilled labor. Certainly not on a spaceport."

"Without contacts..." The woman shrugged. "... you're nothing but meat."

There was a long silence between them as she watched him try to get his mind around this idea.

"Well," he said at length, putting the sealer down on the cabinet between them. "I suppose I go back to the detention area now."

"Is that what you want?" she asked. "It isn't what I want."

"It isn't a matter of..." A bad thought suddenly hit him. "They will return the money you expended to bring me here, won't they?"

The woman shook her head.

"So, that means... I owe you rather a large amount."

The woman nodded.

"Oh." The walls of the little room seemed to be closing in on him. "If I could only get out a message..."

"To your ship?"

"Well, not to the one I came on. I need to use a comm link. I have to get a message through to the nearest Federation Starbase..."

"That would be expensive." A buzzer sounded and the woman took his shirt from the processor chute.

"How expensive?"

"Well, let me see." She shook the shirt out. "A compressed message, a few k... Working casual labor, assuming you'd be picked up a few times a week — which doesn't usually happen — it could take as little as two hundred or so days."

Chekov's face fell. "Oh."

"Assuming you had that long, which you don't," she added unnecessarily. "Working for me — if you worked hard and behaved yourself — you could have enough after one or two nights."

"Oh," Chekov repeated as she handed the shirt to him.

"Look, you're trying to pass up a good opportunity here," the woman said. "I treat my people right, unlike some in the business. You'll walk out that door in much the same condition you came in... Well, you're already in better condition. I'll pay you on top of paying your ticket... and there's a lot of employers out there that don't do that. I have a small clientele — no troublemakers in the group. It's not like I'll be sending you out with strangers."

The navigator held his shirt stupidly to his chest, amazed and terrified that he was actually beginning to consider this.

The woman sighed. "Do you drink?"

"What?... Uh, yes."

"Good." She turned to leave and indicated with a jerk of her head that he should follow. "You look like you could use a drink."

He followed her numbly into the main room.

"Now, don't get nervous," she said, pausing in front of the room's small food processor. "I'm not going to try to drug you... Although if I do hook you up with a client, I will insist you take something... Something so you don't care so much about what they do — and so you don't give them any trouble. That's just my policy, understand?"

Chekov found himself nodding as if he thought this was a very reasonable procedure.

The woman put her hand on her hip. "Are you going to put that shirt on, or are you planning to use it as a napkin?"

The ensign belatedly drew the silky garment on as the woman turned and ordered herself a pale green drink that smelt like tea.

"You want anything in particular?" she asked.

"Anything."

She laughed as she turned back to the processor. "Earthmen drink — mm, it’s been a while... Most planets seem to have one particular beverage associated with them, but not Earth. Romulan Ale, Saurian Brandy, Klingon... How about Scotch? Islay. The man who gave it to me says it's a ladies malt, but you don't strike me as any kind of connoisseur."

Spurning the processor's synthetic offerings, she discarded her tea and bent down to retrieve a green bottle from a low shelf, throwing up weird reflections of the room's contents as she did so. Chekov took the chance to glance around, looking for something to use as a weapon.

He was ashamed that he was considering assault and robbery — especially against someone who had not been at all unkind to him — as a means of laying hands on some cash. However, since the alternative was prostitution...

"The clients I've got lined up for tonight aren't a bad bunch for a beginner," she said, searching for glasses without turning around. "First, there's a couple of Klingons, but they're okay. Never damage the goods. Later there's the Orions. Drunks. They usually fall asleep. Money for vacuum."

There were one or two heavy ornaments that looked like they might have been designed to be used as blackjacks in case of emergency. If anything, they looked a little too lethal.

Unaware of his planning, the woman splashed an inch into each of two glasses. She handed one to Chekov and sat down next to him on the low, upholstered sculpture that he'd finally decided was intended as seating rather than decoration.

She held up her glass. "To Montgomery Scott. A grand man."

Chekov's drink fell from his fingers. "What?"

"Don't expect me to believe you know him."

"But I do," the ensign insisted, blinking incredulously and wondering if he’d fallen into some parallel universe where the laws of chance malfunctioned regularly. "He was one of my superior officers on the _Enterprise_... We were both abducted... You did see him, didn't you? He told you he'd been abducted?"

She eyed him suspiciously. "Keep talking."

"He has..." Chekov tried to put the airbrakes on his mouth. Despite her apparent good opinion of Mr. Scott, he didn't know who this woman was, or who she might be connected with. "He is in great danger. It is for his sake as much as my own that I must get a message back to the Federation."

"I don't know you," she said flatly. "I have no way of knowing who you are. All I know is that you'd say just about anything right now to persuade me to give you a break you've done nothing to deserve."

"I am Ensign Pavel Andreievich Chekov of the U.S.S _Enterprise_. My service number is 656-5827D," Chekov said urgently. "Relay that to a Starbase and you will receive confirmation of my identity. Or if you do not trust me, simply relay the message that Mr. Scott was here and is in great danger."

The woman looked half-persuaded. "You'd better tell me everything," she said, putting down her drink. "Start at the beginning. Don't leave anything out. And I warn you, if one bit of it doesn't tally with what I know, you'll be on the wrong side of an airlock before you know what happens to you."

"Well..." Chekov weighed the potential danger of disclosing everything he knew against the danger of disclosing nothing. "As I said, Mr. Scott is... was one of my superior officers on the _Enterprise_... a Federation vessel..."

He was interrupted by the sound of a low chime.

"Not now." The woman sighed impatiently as she rose and crossed to a small comm unit. "Probably a client. Don't you move a muscle," she warned Chekov, putting a small receiver disk to her ear. "Yeah?"

Only a buzz of the other side of the conversation was audible to the ensign's straining ears.

"Okay... Yeah, I do, but..." The woman's eye fell on Chekov as she listened to her caller. "I don't know if that's a very good idea... Yeah... Yeah... Really..? I don't know... Well, okay, but no rough stuff, understand?"

Chekov watched as she switched off the link and pressed a few more buttons. He thought he could hear the hum of the turbo lift as the woman crossed the room.

"Client," she explained, picking up a towel and tossing it to him. "Wants to talk. Mop that up."

"Of course," the ensign agreed, mopping up the liquor he'd spilt. Mr. Scott certainly wouldn't be pleased by the waste, he reflected. He wondered if Scott would be pleased by any of this. What was his relationship to this woman? Was it possible that an honest, upstanding person could exist on a place like Quondar? Or was this just more of Scott's seedy past coming to light?

He turned at the sound of the lift door opening. He'd been so preoccupied with thoughts of Mr. Scott, he hadn't caught on to the fact that the woman had given someone — some client — permission to enter. As soon as he saw the visitor's distinctive features, he knew this guest was not here primarily to visit his hostess.

"Khwaja!" he gasped. "I..."

The pirate, not waiting for greetings or explanations, dove at the ensign with a growl. Chekov rolled out of the way and scrambled to his feet, but the pirate caught him by the ankle and pulled his leg out from under him. The larger man had him effectively pinned face-first on the carpet in a second. Sitting on the ensign's back holding his arms down with his knees, the first thing the pirate did was to slap a large piece of adhesive tape over the ensign's mouth. The unpleasantly familiar sensation of manacles being affixed to his wrists and ankles followed quickly afterwards.

"I said no rough stuff, Khwaja." When Chekov turned his head, he found the woman had a small blaster aimed at them.

"Sorry." Holding the ensign down with his foot, the pirate rose and carefully drew a computer cassette out of his pocket and held it out for her. "I don't know what wild story he's told you, but here's his ID."

She took it gingerly. "Sit down," she ordered, keeping her weapon trained on him.

"Sure." Khwaja picked Chekov up, using his manacled-together wrists and the wide belt he was wearing as convenient hooks. He sat down on one of the sculpture/chairs, draping the ensign over his lap like an old overcoat. When Chekov struggled in protest at this indignity, the pirate pulled his head up by the hair.

"No matter how bad you think things are now," he assured him, "they can get worse. Fast."

"Pavel Sukharov," the woman said, apparently reading from a small computer terminal somewhere on the other side of the room. "From Earth. Admitted to Starfleet Academy but expelled after two and a half years for cheating. Made his way to the Orion colonies to try to get accepted into the Space Guild's apprentice program, but accumulated a large debt to Vhzon Dilsim of Orr. Tried to run out on that debt, but was caught by the Orion authorities. Vended to Bardon Goudchaux on a five year indenture..."

"Who sold him to me," Khwaja concluded. He patted Chekov on the head. "And now it's been a bad little kitty again, hasn't it? We'll have to give it a good scolding before we put it back in its box, won't we?"

The ensign struggled to no avail. The pirate could manage to hold him securely in place with the one hand that still gripped Brecht's overlarge belt.

"Then he does know Montgomery Scott?" the woman asked distrustfully.

Khwaja shrugged carelessly. "They've met."

"He claimed Scott was in danger."

"Not when I left him," the pirate replied easily. "Since we had to delay our departure until I could retrieve our little delinquent here, we're still in dock. You can call the ship and talk to him yourself if you want. In fact, I'd appreciate it if you'd call him and tell him the two of us will be there in a few minutes."

"Maybe not two," the woman said, her blaster still in her hand. "I've paid for this one. A full ten-days of air."

"In my pocket's a half kee of Illissium," the pirate offered. "I'm sure that will cover any expenses incurred."

"It won't accommodate my clients for tonight."

"Clients?" Khwaja laughed. "Cheznee, surely by now you've realized that Mister Manners here is of no use to you. The minute your back's turned, he'll club you or one of your clients and jump ticket."

"Nobody jumps ticket on me," the woman claimed grimly. "And if he's of no use to me, what use can he be to you?"

"Well, you see, I have more leisure to deal with him than you." The pirate casually let one hand rest on his captive in a manner that provoked a new outbreak of frantic struggling from the ensign. "On the ship, there's no place for him to run and all the time in the world for me to teach him to appreciate the pleasures of his new position."

The woman considered for a long moment. "Make it a full kee... And you'll still owe me."

"I'd end up owing you more if I left him," Khwaja assured her as he rose, setting the ensign precariously on his own fettered feet. Steadying his prisoner with one hand twisted into the loose fabric around his shoulder, the pirate reached into his jacket and threw the woman a clear container of sparkling blue powder.

Chekov turned towards her as best he could, silently pleading for intervention, but the woman was too engrossed in testing the purity of her payoff to notice.

"Come on, kitty," Khwaja said, hoisting the ensign over his shoulder. "Time to go home."


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _in the author's notes, I said there was a plot twist at the end of this chapter that made me throw in the towel for a while. That was in the original chapter division of the story. That twist now occurs at the end of Chapter Nine._

"Guess who I found," Khwaja announced cheerfully as he dumped Chekov as a struggling bundle at the foot of the table in the dining area of an unpleasantly familiar setting.

The ship he had been returned to, the ensign was displeased to note, was Bardon Goudchaux’s _Nell_ instead of Stuart Brecht’s _Black Beauty_. Brecht was nowhere in sight. Goudchaux sat at the head of the table smiling wanly.

To emphasize the desperateness of his plight, Khwaja roughly arranged the magnetized manacles on the navigator’s wrists and ankles against the available metallic surfaces so that he was kneeling with his hands clasped before him on the tabletop like a penitent, the adhesive gag over his mouth still firmly in place.

Chen and Esme, seated on the pirate captain’s left and right respectively, continued to consume their meal, seemingly unmoved by his return.

Goudchaux, clicked his tongue reprovingly like he knew what the answer would be when he asked, "Where did you find him?"

"In a whorehouse," the Orion answered, pinching the ensign’s cheek, "Cashing in on his talent."

“What?!”

Chekov craned his head around to see that Mr. Scott had somehow weathered the winds that had swept Goudchaux back into power and was standing, free and unfettered behind him. The expression on the engineer's face could be interpreted as relief. But was it relief that the navigator was safe, or that he was back under the pirates' control?

"I should be shocked." At the head of the table, the pirate captain had crossed his arms and was shaking his head in mock chagrin. "I know I should be."

"He was at Cheznee’s," Khwaja reported, helping himself to coffee. “Just as we thought.”

“So,” Esme inquired, without looking up from the bowl of oatmeal she was toying with, “he’ll have spoken with our Jessie, then?”

“What?” The second repetition of question from the engineer had a more deeply shocked tone to it.

For the first time since he’d met him, Chekov thought Khwaja looked a little uncomfortable. The half-Orion’s turquoise eyes darted around to his comrades as if he’d prefer one of them to take up the conversation at this apparently awkward juncture.

“He was with Alleyn,” the pirate admitted when his colleagues remained silent.

“Jessie Alleyn? On Quondar?” The engineer's face darkened. He stepped forward to where the ensign was kneeling. "You bloody idiot," he said, cuffing him sharply on the back of his head. "What did you tell her? Anything about the Orlan Du? About the medallion?"

Chekov shook his head, feeling guilty, despite everything, at being the object of the engineer's displeasure.

"But you did ask her to help you get in touch with Starfleet, now didn't you?"

The navigator considered denying it, then decided he wouldn't be believed if he did. He nodded.

"You worthless fool!" With his hands and ankles still bound, the ensign had no way of controlling his fall when Scott pushed him sideways. "What possessed you to get her involved with this?"

"I managed to undermine any credibility he had with her," Khwaja said, helping his captive back up.

“You’re certain of that?” Goudchaux asked sharply.

“Certain.” The half-Orion confirmed. “Though I doubt she’d waste credits on subspace communications at any rate. She definitely doesn’t have the set up to follow us when we leave port.”

“Be that as it may,” the pirate captain replied to Khwaja, though his eyes were on Scott who was for some reason red-faced with emotion and staring down Chen and Esme as if they might have done something very bad. “Put in a call with her to make sure her mind’s at ease where we may be concerned.”

“Right.” Khwaja gave a sharp laugh as he rose and headed towards a communications station. “And if I don’t get an answer, I’ll try again in fifteen minutes.”

If this was an attempt a mood-lightening humor, it failed in a rather spectacular manner.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Scott growled dangerously.

“Ah, Monty,” Esme sighed, never lifting her eyes from her bowl as she shoved her lumpy breakfast around with a spoon. “For a famous engineer, you’re fair awful at sums.”

The Scotsman turned on her. “What ye’ saying, woman?”

“That I think you should nae have such trouble with adding up,” she replied in her saccharine witch-voice, which had gone very cold. “Such as two plus two equals four… And Jessie Alleyn madams a whorehouse just in that direction, there.” She gave him a rather defiant glance as she pointed one crooked finger. “If it’s a visit you’re wanting, now’s the time.”

The engineer’s face drained of color and his mouth set in a hard line. If the medic had been a man, Chekov was sure that Scott would have decked him on the spot.

“You’re an evil, cold-hearted bitch, Esme MacLauren,” the Scotsman spat instead. “You always have been and you will be until the day it finally kills ye.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned heel and stormed from the room.

In the weighty silence that followed, Chekov reflected that the more upset they got, the more similar the medic’s accent sounded to the engineer’s… and the more difficult both of them were to understand.

He could hear the whoosh of the pressurized door behind him opening.

“Did I miss something?” Moray Morgain asked as she entered. She paused to tousle the ensign’s hair. “Oh, look who’s back!”

“Where’s Brecht?” Goudchaux asked, reaching for the coffee carafe.

Morgain smiled wickedly and shrugged. “He’s a little tied up right now.”

“Oh,” Khwaja snorted, deciding to try his hand at comedy again. “So we’ve moved from pretty boys back to father figures again?”

This jest didn’t land any better with his intended audience than his last attempt.

To demonstrate how little she appreciated his jibe, Morgain turned and landed a solid right-cross on the Orion’s jaw.

“Hey! Hey!” the pirate protested, catching her wrists. “Don’t be so touchy!”

“Runs in the fam…” Esme muttered.

“Time for a dose and a dram,” Chen interrupted her, firmly pushing her bowl aside.

“Stow that you two,” Goudchaux ordered Khwaja and Morgain sharply. “Get Brecht up here on the double. Make the call to Alleyn. Then I want us under way. Chop-chop. Understood?”

“Aye,” his crew chorused without a great deal of enthusiasm.

“And remember,” the pirate captain added with lethal calm, as they headed towards their assigned tasks, “I will have order on my ship, or you will not remain on my ship. Understood?”

His pirate crew eyed one another discontentedly. It seemed to be decided by mutual assent that a verbal acknowledgement of this warning was unnecessary.

The medic, however, was not in on this agreement.

“I’ll be the death of ye yet, Bardon Goudchaux,” she promised, pausing before she exited. “Just ye wait.”

* * *

"So, what does he know, Brecht?" The pirate captain asked turned to the freebooter. "Why were you keeping him alive?"

Goudchaux had left the ensign alone and on his knees, magnetized to the dining table for what felt like over an hour… maybe two… before returning with Brecht under Chen’s escort.

The freebooter looked a bit worse for wear. He was sporting a black eye and a pair manacles. He was dressed in a pair of black pants and was currently wearing no shirt. The pirate captain had him seated at his right hand. The interrogator loomed over his shoulder.

Seeming undaunted, Brecht shrugged and poured himself a cup of coffee. "I was keeping him alive because, like the rest of you, I don't know what he knows."

"You interrogated him, didn't you?"

"Yes," the freebooter admitted. "But not being the expert that our friend Mr. Chen is, I didn't find out much more than his identification number and his collar size."

"I've been telling you all along that that's about all he knows," Khwaja interjected vehemently from where he was pacing on the other side of the room. "He's just playing us off against each other. How long will it be before he gets his hands on a weapon, or the comm station, or the self-destruct sequence?"

Four pairs of very unfriendly eyes were turned on the ensign.

“Well, young man.” Goudchaux crossed his arms. “It’s time to talk or get tossed out the airlock. Are you ready to talk?”

Chekov swallowed hard and nodded. He’d had ample time to come up with a plan. As weak as it was, he had little choice but to put it into effect.

The pirate captain nodded to Chen, who stepped forward to remove his gag with his usual tender touch.

“Well?” Goudchaux prompted impatiently, as the ensign winced and attempted to wipe his mouth clean on his shirt.

Chekov took in a deep breath. "I know exactly where the treasure is. Mr. Brecht gave me access to information I needed. I now know the location and the code to obtain it."

The pirates' silence held for a long moment until it was finally broken by Brecht's laugh.

"You do have to admit that the lad has a grasp of psychology," he chuckled.

"Then it's a lie?" Khwaja demanded.

"No," Brecht answered, shaking his head in admiration. "That's just it. He could be telling the absolute truth. I did give him a reference book on the Orlan Du that he'd never seen before. He had sufficient time to go through it before he escaped."

"Or he could be lying." Goudchaux leaned forward. "To try to save his miserable skin."

"He's wasting our time," Khwaja interrupted. "You might as well let me have him."

Chekov pushed his shoulders back, trying to minimize his disheveled, helpless appearance. "This voyage has cost you all a great deal so far. Now both Brecht and Goudchaux have spent more here on repairs and dock dues. Securing my return also cost a surprisingly large amount. I am unclear if Mr. Brecht has received payment for the fifth fragment of the medallion, since Mr. Scott is no longer available to serve that function. At any rate, Brecht still must find some way to pay his sponsors. It seems to me it is financially imperative to you all that you take advantage of a clear opportunity to find the treasure."

Goudchaux's crew exchanged glances. One could almost taste their re-ignited greed

"Very well argued, Mister Chekov." Goudchaux congratulated him, but his watery eyes were still full of contempt. "Perhaps if we'd had you here earlier to put it all so clearly for us, we might have saved ourselves some bitter words. I still favor plan B, but before we cut our losses on the Orlan Du, I think we might as well discover exactly what you do know. Mr. Chen, if you aren't too occupied at the moment?"

"There's no need for that," Chekov protested as the interrogator stepped forward to take custody of him. "I am quite willing to co-operate. If someone would release me..."

"Right." Gouchaux pressed a button on a remote sitting on the table in front of him and the ensign's bonds demagnetized. "We call this bluff here and now for once and for all. If you know the coordinates of the treasure, show us."

Chen placed a compact data entry console in front of him.

The navigator bit his lip uneasily. He would have much preferred to be sitting at a navigation station on the ship’s bridge. His plan might not bear up well under a great deal of scrutiny…It was too embarrassingly silly. Once the coordinates were translated into the system used by Goudchaux's computer, the simple-minded approach he was using wouldn't be obvious. Chekov had no faith it would work — there was no reason it should — but it would keep him alive for a few hours longer.

The ensign powered up the board. He recalled the first two numbers from the medallion and made the necessary conversions. It was difficult to maintain proper concentration with six impatient pirates breathing down one's neck. After a moment, a small blue cross pinpointed the desired location on the panel in front of him. In deference to the others' interest, Chekov ordered the unit to create a projection of a chart above the table before them. "There."

"Does that make sense to you, Brecht?" the pirate captain asked.

The freebooter nodded cautiously. "That's near enough to the old Orion power base. It's not a highly populated area, or on a major trading route... at least not now. I couldn't say what it might have been then."

Khwaja squinted at the glowing star chart. "How did you work that out?"

"I could explain the mathematics," Chekov responded. "But I doubt your grasp of the principles would enable you to understand."

The pirate grabbed a handful of the ensign's hair and used it to pull his head backwards. "Be careful, kitten," Khwaja warned. "I might think of a better use for your tongue — before I nail it to the wall of my cabin."

"How long will it take us to get to those coordinates?" Goudchaux asked the Orion.

"Inconspicuously?” The pirate shrugged as he released his captive. “Assuming we can maintain warp four — thirty hours."

"I can do that in the _Black Beauty_," Brecht agreed, then he noticed that Khwaja and Goudchaux were frowning at him. "We'll need her too..."

"Why?" Khwaja wanted to know.

"The Admiral here informed me that it would be necessary to two ships to locate the treasure," Brecht said, turning to the navigator.

“Why?” the Orion repeated, gesturing towards the very complete seeming holographic map projected on the table before them.

Chekov opened his mouth to provide a brilliant explanation. Unfortunately, his brain didn’t have one prepared to come out.

"Maybe, we don’t,” Goudchaux surmised. “Maybe he only said that in order to..."

"...To make sure I didn't let Goudchaux get away with his friend Scott." Brecht rolled his eyes, realizing he'd been taken in. "How touching."

"Well, it looks like our young friend has provided us with all he knows." On this cue from Goudchaux, Chen brushed Khwaja aside and guided Chekov back up to standing. "It’s out the airlock time..."

“Wait! Wait!” the navigator protested as the interrogator lifted him off his feet. “You are not going to see if the coordinates are verified?”

“To give you a chance to make up a different lie?” Goudchaux shrugged and shook his head.

“Bardon,” Brecht interjected, holding up a belaying hand in Chen’s direction. “We may need the lad — if for nothing else — to keep your friend Scott in check.”

The pirate captain leaned back, crossed his arms, and smiled sardonically at the next prisoner he was probably planning to eject into open space. “We?”

“Yes.” Brecht nodded adamantly as he pulled his chair closer to the head of the table and topped off Goudchaux’s coffee cup. “Let’s have a little parlay about that, shall we?”

The pirate captain gave a short humorless laugh. “Well, I do have thirty hours to kill…” He gave the ensign dangling in Chen’s grasp a frown. “.. among other things…Take our boy genius down to the engine room and have our old friend put him to work. And keep a sharp eye on them both.”

* * *

“Did she recognize you?”

The ensign had traveled two decks down with the interrogator in complete silence before Chen had suddenly turned, lifted him off his feet, slammed him against a bulkhead, and made this strange inquiry.

“Who?” the navigator gasped, his mind very much still on the coordinates to the treasure he’d provided and how nearly he’d escaped being put out an airlock.

Chen shook him hard to focus his thinking.

Since no one had recognized him in recent memory, the ensign decided that the correct response was to shake his head.

The interrogator spat a polyglot slur at him.

Chekov blinked in surprised recognition. The phrase was drawn from contemporary Uzbek. It literally translated as “little filth” in Standard but contextually was quite vile in Russian. The epithet was very popular with members of the Academy’s ice hockey team when he’d played forward because the non-Russian speaking referees didn’t penalize them for using foul language. His mother, though, had not been pleased when he’d used it to refer to his aunt’s Pekinese in front of her.

It was a word that had such a specific reference to a time and place in his life that Chen seemed the wrong age and nationality to use it… Then again… he could be Uzbek…

“What?” the navigator asked, convinced that he must have misheard.

“Never mind.” Chen released him, allowing him to slide down the wall in an a rather undignified manner before turning him towards the ship’s small engine room with a shove. “Doesn’t matter. She’ll come after him.”

* * *

"Are you finished with that pipework yet?"

Chekov wiped his eyes against the small patch of remaining clean cloth on the shoulder of his shirt. "No, Mr. Scott."

"Stop yer damned dawdling, then, man,” his superior growled. “Put yer back into it!"

The ensign sprayed another coat of solvent on the greasy black metal in front of him and wished for a small portable version of the _Nell’s_ invisibility cloak. He'd been hard at work for over two hours now without a break. If he wasn't "putting his back into it", then that region of his body was surely doing a lot of complaining about nothing. The navigator was covered with grease and sweat. The variety of vicious cleansing agents Scott deemed necessary to bring the _Nell's_ engine room up to his professional standards was torturing Chekov's nose and eyes. Even through the protective gloves he wore, the ensign's hands felt raw from the scrubbing.

On the _Enterprise_, when he’d drawn an assignment in Engineering, the junior officers had been quick to praise their chief as a superlative officer and mentor, but had warned the ensign to steer clear when Scott was angry or in a hurry. Stealing a glance over at where the engineer was stripping down a piece of machinery to its core components, Chekov was sure he’d never seen the Scotsman in a fouler mood or working at a more harried pace.

Although the engineer hadn't spoken to him in some time other than to specify what was to be cleaned and how, or to speculate on what sort of personal defects were making the ensign work so slowly, there had been a good deal of more specific discussion of his recent lack of good decision-making skills when he had entered...

“And what fool thing have ya done now?” the engineer had demanded, rising from where he was stooped over a piece of machinery as Chen pushed the ensign into the engine room.

“I..I..” he had stammered.

“Gave Goudchaux the location of the treasure,” Chen provided for him unhelpfully, shoving him forward.

“What?!”

“A possible location,” the ensign mitigated hastily.

“Oh, you did, did you? Brilliant. And what’s to keep him from putting you out the airlock when nothing turns out to be there?”

“Actually he has already considered doing just so,” the navigator was forced to admit.

“Of course he has, you blithering idiot,” Scott had replied with a noticeable lack of sympathy. “And what great lie did you spin to put that off?”

Chekov had frowned a protest at having his honesty so called into question, but under the current circumstances and in the current company did not feel at liberty to vigorously debate the matter. “Actually Mr. Brecht is trying to ally himself with Goudchaux and convince him that they can use me as a pawn to somehow exert control over your actions.”

Scott had only snorted. “Well, your Mr. Brecht seems to be quite the bloody optimist, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, sir,” the ensign had been forced to agree.

Chekov frowned as he folded a rag solid with heavy black residue inside out, revealing a relatively unpolluted patch of material, and continued polishing.

On top of everything else, the thrum and whistle of the engines was giving him a pounding headache. The navigator was so tired it was getting hard to think. Above all else, he really needed to be able to think right now. He had no idea what he was going to do next — other than being exposed as a fraud and killed within the next thirty hours, of course.

Despite the fact that he was still hoping the engineer’s antipathy towards him was all part of an act intended to beguile the pirates, it still was depressing to have fallen so far out of the engineer’s good graces. Although they were in dire straits, and the ensign’s ability to successfully outwit the pirates had proved far from reliable, Chekov had always thought Scott had rather liked him… Though, now that he considered, most of the engineer’s positive comments had been about the Russian’s capacity to drink demonstrated off duty instead of aptitude for engineering demonstrated on-duty…

It didn’t help current matters that Chen and Scott seemed to be rather angry with each other. They said nothing as the engineer went about his work and the interrogator took up his sentry post by a computer station. However on the occasions Scott had reason to move across the space, the two would exchange baleful glances and make contemptuous noises in each other’s direction.

“Right.” The engineer straightened and gestured the ensign towards the computer terminal where Chen was sitting. “Have your minder move his fat arse and we’ll run checks.”

The navigator rose to obey only to find his way blocked by a very immovable mass of pirate.

“No computer access.” Chen crossed his arms. “Only cleaning.”

“Right then.” Scott impatiently pushed the ensign to one side. “I’ll do it myself then.”

Chen did not immediately move aside for the engineer either.

In response to his intransigence, Scott made a rather aggressive two-handed gesture that read as something along the lines of “Get out of my way” or “Do you want to fight?”

Chekov drew in an anxious breath, for despite the engineer’s boldness, there was an impressive size difference between the two men that was all in the pirate’s favor. However, after taking a slow moment to show how unintimidated he was, Chen turned the chair just enough for the engineer to be able to squeeze past him to get at the necessary controls.

“So the two of you know each other then?” the navigator blurted out nervously, not really thinking through the question or the wisdom of asking it.

The two men exchanged venomous glances as Scott activated a sequence of controls on the panel.

“Aye, we know each other well, don’t we?”

The ghost of a smile turned up the corners of the interrogator’s lips. “Bad penny.”

“Always turning up, eh?” The engineer reached out and flicked at a pendant the pirate was wearing about his neck. “Still wearing this bit of trash, are ye?”

It was a rather odd choice for an ornament — a transfer coil chip.

Chen lifted the pendant beyond his grasp with one thick finger. “You gotta get permission for what you wear,” he countered. “Eh, Mr. Starfleet?”

Scott propped his knee against the side of the computer station and twisted the heel of his boot. He withdrew some non-regulation item from a hiding place there and held it up so it was visible to the pirate, but not to the ensign.

“Ready when you are, Mr. Bad Penny,” he sneered to his old acquaintance.

Any verbal response that either Chekov or Chen would have made to this fairly unexpected revelation was interrupted by a series of loud beeps from the computer announcing the successful completion of the diagnostic check.

“All right then, Chen, my lad.” Scott briskly closed down the cross-check circuitry. “Call your boss and let him know he can be cruising at warp six again for as long as he likes.”

Chekov’s heart skipped a beat. Warp six had been the speed point that would trigger the emergency communication burst from the warp engines that he had programmed into the _Nell’s_ computer system. Did Scott know?

“And what are you gaping at, you bleeding idiot?” the engineer asked, turning on him. "I hope y’ve no notion that we’re going to leave any engine room of mine in such a bloody mess, mister!"

“Yes, sir…I mean, no, sir,” the ensign stammered, quickly scrambling for his toolbox.

“I’ll ‘yes, sir, no, sir’ you!” the Scotsman yelled, balling the rag up and throwing at the hapless navigator with all his might. Before the ensign could recover, the engineer unbalanced him with a kick. "A filthy slacker like you isn't fit to crew a garbage scow, let alone a starship. You’re a complete disgrace."

“Yes, sir.” The navigator cleared the scattered tools as quickly as he could. “Sorry, sir.”

Apparently not yet appeased, the engineer reached down and grabbed the ensign by his shirt front. With his other hand, he pointed towards the other end of the workroom floor. “I’ll have that tub of bearings polished and balanced.” He pulled the navigator in close with a threatening growl. “And I’ll not be asking twice.”

“Yes, sir.”

Then, without changing his fearsome expression, Scott opened and closed his right eye in a signal that a surveillance camera aimed straight at his face might not be quick enough to catch as a wink. “Understand me, mister?”

First the perhaps non-coincidence of the engineer working very hard to get the pirate’s ship up to the correct speed to trigger the emergency signal the ensign had programmed into the _Nell’s _warp engines, and now, this wink…

“Yes, sir,” Chekov replied, hoping fervently that he did.

* * *

“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Stuart Brecht asked as he held his coffee cup up for a refill.

Chekov gave him a narrow look as he obliged. The atmosphere aboard the pirate ship was as desperately non-collegial as one might expect seventeen hours into a wait for a treasure that might not appear with distrustful companions actively plotting against each other. The only thing that could be described as “cozy” about the situation was that they were in rather close quarters and were currently whiling away the time by drinking coffee and eating oatmeal.

The oatmeal was Mr. Scott’s creation. He had commandeered the galley at the start of the morning watch, muttering darkly about the indignities of being subjected to “Russian Cuisine” so early in the work day. 

Despite this affront to his homeland, and invasion of an area of the ship he had come to view as being at least somewhat under his control, the navigator had not objected because: A) Whether or not the engineer was playing a part, his behavior towards the ensign still involved a great deal of very real shoving and loudly pointing out his various mental defects; B) The navigator did not regard the assembling of pre-prepared foodstuffs provided by the ship’s limited replication system as constituting “cooking” and therefore being much worth defending; and C) Although able to defend his homeland in many areas, if the ensign was well aware that if his native land’s honor was dependent on his culinary abilities, then Mother Russia was in serious trouble.

Although not to Chekov’s taste, oatmeal proved extremely popular with this particular pirate crew. They had consumed an impressive amount of it while they sniped and glared daggers at each other. 

The only exception to this enthusiasm for the mixture had been Moray Morgain, who had started out enjoying it as much as everyone else, but had gotten into some sort of screaming match with the medic while Chekov was out of the dining area. Her portion had ended up splattered against the bulkhead and had to be removed from the grillwork with some difficulty after her abrupt exit.

“Such a handy little housekeeper.” Goudchaux tapped the rim of his cup to indicate that he also wanted a refill. “Almost makes me glad I didn’t space him.”

The breakfast crowd had dwindled to the pirate captain and the freebooter. Brecht had gained a shirt, but still wore his manacles. He had not been given any sort of assignment in the pirate crew but, like Chekov, had not yet been shown the outside of the ship’s airlock. The navigator supposed that he, too, was on a sort of probation awaiting the outcome of their current treasure hunt.

The ensign took in a deep breath and decided to push through with the plan he’d given consideration to in the short rest period he’d been allowed after his time in the _Nell’s _engine room. “You might have also regretted such a decision when you realized that I had not divulged the treasure’s security code to you.”

Both men’s coffee cups froze.

Brecht laughed. “I may have misled you a bit about the Admiral here, Goudchaux,” he apologized. “You see, your average Russian is more apt to have an enthusiasm for chess than poker. It’s still a game of strategy, but they’re used to taking their own sweet time to consider their next move.”

“What code?” the pirate captain demanded, ignoring him.

“Of course the treasure is not going to be left in the open.” Chekov stacked the empty plates into a neat pile. “A security code will have to be transmitted from this vessel.”

“Which you are claiming to know, but have not yet told us.” Goudchaux’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Sounds like you’re volunteering for another heart-to-heart with Mr. Chen.”

The navigator held up a forestalling hand. “I am not saying that I am unwilling to divulge the information.” He gestured towards the freebooter. “I would merely rather do so to my advantage. I wish, like Mr. Brecht, to parlay.”

Goudchaux rolled his pale eyes at his companion. “Now see what you’ve started.”

Brecht shrugged. “Admiral see. Admiral do.”

“Well, Mr. Chessmaster,” the pirate captain replied crossing his arms. “The deal making shop is closed for the day. We’ll have to see how your first lie plays out before we make a bargain based on your second. So go get some coffee into Morgain. Have her out of her sulk and onto the bridge by 0900 so we can get to this pile of nothing of yours before I lose patience and space the both of you.”

“Perhaps I should…” Brecht offered, half-rising.

“No,” Goudchaux stopped him. “If ever there was gonna be a day she was off father-figures, this is it…”

* * *

“What?”

Chekov sighed and shifted his tray to his other hand. He had anticipated that his reception from Moray Morgain would be chilly. “Coffee,” he explained patiently into the comm unit outside her cabin door.

A colorful but impractical suggestion for what he could do with the liquid began to issue from within.

“It is your captain’s wish that you be ready to report for duty by 0900, Miss Morgain,” he replied stiffly. “This is not my idea.”

“Go away!”

“Gladly,” the ensign replied. “As soon as I have delivered the coffee.”

The trick, he knew, as he listened to the sounds of her muttering vilely as she made her way to the door would be seeing that any of the substance got in her instead of on him.

Morgain was, as he expected, bleary-eyed from drink. What he didn’t anticipate were the blood-stains.

“You have hurt yourself,” he said, pointing to her bleeding hand in alarm. 

The pirate retreated from him, waving him off a bit unsteadily.

Stepping into the cabin, Chekov could grasp the situation in a glance. There was a broken whisky bottle on the floor. The cut on Morgain’s hand did not seem to be deep. Probably just a drunken accident.

“You should go to the sickbay,” he suggested, then seeing the set look on her face, he remembered the spilled porridge and the argument with the medic. “Oh…” He looked around the cabin for first aid supplies. “If you will allow me?”

“I don’t like to be touched,” she warned him as retrieved a medi-pack from the cabin’s small bathroom.

“Please take a seat.” The navigator gestured the pirate towards the cabin’s bed with a broad, formal gesture, like a doorman welcoming a visitor to a grand hotel. “And now, if you will place your arm against your knee and use your left hand to stabilize your right, I believe we can manage.”

“Jack of all trades.” Morgain scoffed while she obeyed. “Aren’t you just the cleverest little fellow?”

“A broad based grounding in a variety of useful skills is the purpose of my much maligned Academy training, Miss Morgain,” he informed her, not bothering to edit out the note of superiority that he felt the situation merited.

Keeping contact to the minimum that twenty-third century first aid technology could provide, Chekov ran a sterilite pen over bleeding gash between her fingers that traced down to her palm.

After watching his efforts silently for a few moments, Morgain drew in a deep breath and said, “I guess you hate your Mr. Scott pretty bad now, don’t you?”

“No,” the ensign replied automatically.

The pirate lady blinked her one eye in surprise at him.

“His actions are far from acceptable at present,” the Russian hastened to explain, “and several seemingly disreputable aspects of his background have come to light. However, he has always been a superlative officer. Despite present circumstances, I must maintain hope there will eventually be some explanation for his actions and he will come to his senses.”

Morgain shook her head and gave a cynical laugh. “Brave dumb little tin soldier.”

“Why do you ask?” he inquired, ignoring her last comment as he switched instruments.

“The old bat keeps trying to convince me that he’s my father.”

The medikit dropped from the ensign’s numb fingers. “What?!”

“I know.” Morgain nodded. “She’s insane. She’ll play with your head too if you’re not careful.”

“So…” Chekov put two fingers to his temple steady his spinning head. “The medic, Esme, is claiming that Mr. Scott is your father?”

“She’s dropping some heavy hints in that direction… but, like I said, she’s crazy. She thinks she can see the future and things like that.”

The ensign nodded slowly, reflecting that his interactions with any member of this pirate crew could be used to support a claim of insanity…

“I was raised in an orphanage.” With her uninjured hand, Morgain reached for her half-filled, blood-smeared shot glass. “But my parents weren’t dead. They were both underage. When that happens, they put a little scrambler code into your DNA that smudges out a tiny part of your genetic records on Federation databases to protect your parent’s identities because — hey, anybody can make a mistake, huh?”

The navigator made no reply to her bitter query, but continued to carefully seal her open wound.

“There’s hacks, of course,” the pirate continued. “But the hacks and hackers are expensive. By the time I could afford them, I decided that I didn’t give a damn anymore. Two dumb random kids hadn’t figured out contraception yet. Who cares, right? But when I was a dumb random kid, I cared a lot because I had this clue… Like an orphanin a Victorian novel, I had a weird clue. One of the women at the orphanage remembered that I had been brought in by this mysterious woman wearing this strange locket. Not my mother. Too old. As soon as I could bust out a window, I set out after her. And our Esme leaves a helluva trail. She has that degenerative bone disease.” Morgain held up her free hand in imitation of the medic’s claw-like manner of gesture. “Has been addicted to Blue Lace forever. That’s probably what got her kicked out of med school. That or being crazy. She ran around for years wearing the 5th shard of the medallion of the freaking Orlan Du as a necklace.”

Chekov opened his eyes wide at this detail.

“For luck, dearie,” Morgain said in raspy imitation of the medic. “Up until now she’s never given me any hint of who my parents were. She told me that when the pieces of the medallion came together, I’d get my inheritance. I’d convinced myself that it was going to come in the form of jewels. It turns out that it’s finding out that my parents are a washed up Starfleet engineer and some two-bit whore.”

The navigator took a long, silent moment to consider an appropriate reaction as he ran a sealing seam over her wound.

“I cannot speak for the accuracy of your medic’s information,” he said, finally. “However, as far as being “washed up”… Although, as I have said previously we are currently in difficult circumstances, Mr. Scott is brilliant, highly respected engineer — arguably the finest in all of Starfleet. As for Miss Alleyn — in my limited experience of her, she is an astute and capable business woman — Highly respected by local law enforcement.

“You’re sweet.” The pirate lady shook her head and patted him on the leg. “Stupid, but sweet.”

Chekov cleared his throat as he began to re-pack the medikit and was very glad that he wasn’t basing large portions of his self-esteem on this young woman’s opinion of him. “Thank you, I think.”

“Listen, don’t say a word about this to anyone,” Morgain requested firmly. “Like I said, I have money now for the hack. When we get back to civilization, I can find out if what Esme is hinting at is true. No point in getting everyone excited about nothing right now.”

The navigator nodded. “That seems wise.”

The pirate lady sighed and poured herself another whisky. “This whole damned treasure hunt is turning out to be way more inbred than anyone could possibly believe,” she complained to no one in particular, downing the liquor, “and way more weirdly Scottish…”

* * *

"Now whatever could this be?" Goudchaux gestured at the screen. In the middle of the star field, there was a familiar distortion pattern.

"A cloaked ship," Chekov said automatically.

Goudchaux turned and gave him a narrow look. "I didn't ask you."

The ensign had finally made his first trip to the _Nell’s_ cramped bridge. Gouchaux sat in the captain’s center seat with Chen close at his right hand in the gunner’s position and Khwaja and Morgain sharing the helm in the far forward position.

Chekov stood with Scott at the back of the bridge where the engineer was laboring on the sensor array. Only the medic and Brecht were missing. Both of them were so greatly out of favor with the pirate captain, the ensign wasn’t entirely surprised.

The navigator been called in earlier than he expected to make good on his boast to unravel the mystery of the Orlan Du’s medallion. This sudden appearance of a cloaked ship, however, had changed the equation. Unlike the miller’s daughter in the story of Rumpelstiltskin, it looked like the subspace message Chekov had embedded in the _Nell’s_ warp signature might have brought more than a temperamental supernatural creature to his aid in his hour of need.

"The lad's right." Scott stepped forward. "Have they spotted us?"

"They've given no sign of it. We're cloaked now."

"Where are we? How near the coordinates?"

"We are three hundred kilometres from the co-ordinates. They are exactly on them." Moray looked up from her board and smiled at Chekov. "But that doesn't look like a three thousand year old Orion treasure chest, now does it? Who did you talk to on Quondar?"

The ensign shook his head. "No one. Not about the Orlan Du."

“All right now.” The engineer spun him around and pulled his manacles together behind his back. “That’ll be quite enough out of you.”

“Mr. Scott,” he protested automatically as the Scotsman gave him a rough shove towards the dormant communications console opposite the station where he was working.

“Stay put.” The engineer twisted the ensign’s hands uncomfortably so that his fingers were positioned beneath the metallic front edge of the console. “No more of your lip either. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” The navigator met his superior’s eyes and nodded. “Understood.”

"We might have been able to spot whoever’s out there sooner, or tell more about them now if sensors were operational," Goudchaux prompted Scott impatiently.

The engineer gestured exasperatedly. "I wasn't expecting you to need them for another four hours or so. They'd have been working much better by then. Wouldn't they, Khwaja? It's hardly our fault if you don't stick to your plans."

The pirate captain turned back to his helm team. "Moray, maneuver around them at this distance until they're between us and Quondar, just in case they're expecting us to come from that direction. Chen, be ready to fire the moment I de-cloak."

Moray took the ship slowly around in the broad circle Goudchaux had specified, taking no risks with thrusters that would give away their position, using tiny nudges of the impulse engines to keep on course.

Chekov bit his bottom lip nervously, anxious for the safety of whatever potential friend might be hiding out in space. What, though, if they were only another group of rapacious treasure seekers?

"Ready to fire, Chen. Three, two, one..."

The distortion field shifted suddenly and Chen's shot passed harmlessly through the exact center of its previous location.

"They're bloody mind readers," Khwaja exclaimed.

"Find them!" Goudchaux slammed his fist down to re-activate the cloaking device, but he was too late.

The ship bucked under incoming fire. Alarms screamed. The shaking was repeated. Chen was serenely locating the attacker, however his weapons station suddenly erupted in red flashing lights as the phaser banks absorbed a direct hit. The engineering station was similarly ablaze with demands for urgent attention.

The firing stopped.

Smoke drifted in, as if the air filtration wasn't coping too well somewhere in the system.

"Damage reports?" Goudchaux said quietly, sounding almost as dignified as a real captain, for once.

"Shields at twenty per cent, phasers disabled, sensors down."

Chekov suddenly felt his manacles release. He quickly felt around for the grip of the weapon the Mr. Scott had stowed under the communications console — and had almost twisted his wrist out of the socket trying to unobtrusively show him was there a few moments ago. 

Without pausing to check the settings on the weapon, Chekov fired a glowing orange beam first into Goudchaux’s back then into Chen’s. His beams almost crossed with Scott’s who was also firing.

Both of his targets collapsed with most satisfying thuds.

Neither Morgain and Khwaja had time to turn around before they too were stunned.

“Bet that felt good.” Scott grinned and slapped the ensign on the shoulder as he rapidly activated the communications panel and tapped out a message to their cloaked attacker. “Didn’t it, lad?”

“You have no idea,” the ensign replied, heaving a giant sigh of relief… although sitting in the middle of space in a pirate ship without weapons or shields or crew wasn’t exactly an ideal state. “What about Stuart Brecht and the other woman?”

“I flooded the lower decks with knock-out gas five minutes ago.”

Chekov frowned at the unconscious pirates and did some quick calculations as to how long a heavy stun setting on the disruptors Scott had somehow managed to smuggle onto the bridge was going to last. “We will need to secure these cossacks somehow.”

“Yes.” The engineer smiled broadly as he pointed to where an unmistakable Starfleet recognition code had begun to flash on one of the screens on the communications panel. “What say we go welcome aboard our reinforcements first, eh?”


	9. Chapter 9

“Jessie!”

Chekov was surprised and pleased to see the two familiar figures who walked through the _Nell’s_ docking hatch — Not half as surprised or pleased as Mr. Scott who immediately swept the Quondar madam up into a passionate embrace which she returned with equal enthusiasm.

“Welcome aboard, Sulu.” Feeling some sort of gesture was necessary, Chekov greeted his helm partner with a formal hand shake.

“How’s it going?” the helmsman replied, grinning broadly.

“Much better now,” the navigator answered, heaving a deep sigh of relief.

The two of them fell politely silent as they waited for the couple next to them to come up for air…

… which didn’t happen for a rather long time.

“Mr. Scott and Ms. Alleyn are previously acquainted,” Chekov explained.

“I get that,” Sulu assured him.

"Well, if it isn't Peterson." Jessie Alleyn laughed when she finally got a chance to notice that there was anyone else on board the ship. "And from what I understand, it isn't."

"Peterson?" Sulu repeated.

The navigator cleared his throat uncomfortably. "It's a long story..."

"Not that long." The helmsman grinned. "But I can't wait to hear your version of it."

Chekov felt his cheeks coloring. "Perhaps we should secure the bridge, Mr. Scott… Mr. Scott?"

The engineer seemed to have eyes for nothing but his long-lost lady love. “Oh, aye…” he said, half-absently, keeping his arms wrapped tightly around her waist. “Little as these devils deserve better, I won’t leave them with no shields or weapons floating adrift. Jessie and I will reconnoiter the engine room while the two of you lock down the bridge and everyone on it.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

It felt so good to Chekov to be given reasonable orders from a superior officer in a reasonable tone of voice —not accompanied by kicks, shoves, insults, or curses — that he would have happily performed back-flips through hoops if so requested.

“And Sulu.” Scott stopped them, pointing at the still-open docking bay from which the rescue party had entered. “Lock that hatch. We’ll be wanting no more mischief before we put this cursed ship behind us.”

* * *

"You look like you've joined the circus," Sulu commented as he and Chekov moved quickly through the _Nell’s _silent passageways. "Wrestling bears or something. What's happened to your face?"

"Slightly less than what happened to the rest of my body," the navigator replied shortly, opening the door to an equipment locker and taking out several sets of manacles. "Here. Take some of these."

The helmsman raised an eyebrow as he turned a cuff over in his hand. “Is this going to be necessary?”

“Oh, yes,” the ensign replied without mercy or hesitation.

Sulu frowned. "Where did you get those bruises, Pavel?"

“From the people who are making these necessary,” Chekov replied, using one of the manacles he was carrying to press the control that opened the door to the bridge.

The pirate crew was still present and sleeping undisturbed.

"Where did you get your ship?" The navigator asked as he carefully lifted Moray Morgain from the pilot’s seat, cuffed her and arranged her as comfortably as possible on the deck. “I did not get a very good look at it, but it did not seem like a Starfleet design.”

"Starfleet supplied it,” his helm partner answered as he did the same with Khwaja. “But yeah, you’re right. It’s not Starfleet. From the mix-match of components, I'd say it's an Orion vessel, but the Orions don't have cloaking."

"Unless they've advanced in their negotiations with the Klingons," Chekov mused, remembering a comment Brecht had made.

"You sound like you've become an expert on Intergalactic politics," Sulu said, as he moved to secure Goudchaux in the spot where the pirate captain had fallen.

"Not at all," the ensign replied ruefully.

Looking back at Khwaja and Morgain, the navigator decided against revealing anything the two of them had confided to him about who they might be for the moment. There would be time enough to unravel such claims with the proper authorities when they returned to Federation space.

It took Chekov and Sulu working together to roll Chen off the console where he’d collapsed. They weren’t able to do as neat a job of arranging his limbs. In the end, they had to settle for manacling each wrist and ankle to a different metallic surface. After his treatment at the interrogator’s hands, though, the navigator’s concerns were more practical than humanitarian.

"So, Starfleet sent you after me?" Chekov asked when the two of them were finally able to get down to the business of attending to the many red lights flashing for attention on damage control panels.

"And Mr. Scott.” Sulu nodded, his fingers flying over _Nell’s_ helm controls. “As soon as it was discovered the two of you were missing, several pilots were recruited to try to trace vessels that left Bidoah about the time you went AWOL. I just got lucky enough to draw the right one, it seems. I've got to admit I lost you a dozen times. If I hadn't got the message you sent..."

"The message I sent?"

"Yeah. These coordinates and your birthday. I figured it had to be you."

Chekov almost laughed. One of Goudchaux's crew must have been trying to transmit the Orlan Du code to a cohort. Not knowing it was supposed to be the location of a fabulous Orion treasure, Sulu had come to the same obvious contemporary interpretation that had been plaguing Chekov since he'd first seen the numbers.

"I decided it was a rendezvous point," Sulu continued, although clearly puzzled by his shipmate's incongruous reaction. "On my way here, another message was relayed to me from a port called Quondar, from Miss Alleyn, who was making inquiries using your service number. I stopped and picked her up and got an earful all the way here."

"I can imagine." Chekov could feel his cheeks glowing hotly as he punched a series of commands into the computer console in front of him.

Suddenly there was the bright flash and unmistakable whine of the discharge of an energy weapon.

The navigator reached for the disruptor stuck in the back of his belt.

“Ill-advised, Admiral.” Brecht’s voice came from the ceiling.

The freebooter swung down from an opening in one of the air vents, with a disruptor pistol in one hand.

Chekov glanced over to where Sulu was slumped across the helm.

“I’ve only stunned him,” Brecht warned, taking the navigator’s disruptor, “but I can do worse if you don’t cooperate.”

“Mr. Scott flooded the lower decks with tranquilizer gas,” the navigator said as the freebooter double-checked that there were no open comm channels in operation. “How did you manage to avoid that?”

“Trade secret,” Brecht replied unhelpfully. “Now I want you to post that code you were boasting to Goudchaux about having worked out.”

“The treasure code?” Chekov gave an exasperated sigh. “That was all nonsense.”

The freebooter pressed the barrel of his disruptor to the navigator’s temple. “Humor me.”

“Mr. Scott will be here presently,” the Russian warned.

Brecht nudged him towards his task ungently with the weapon. “Quickly then.”

“Very well.” Although he was not at all happy about testing his outrageously foolish theory under these circumstances, Chekov had to admit, he too was a bit curious to see if the programming would actually work. There was no rational interpretation for the numbers. However, they seemed somehow charmed...

Chekov took a deep breath and shook his head before hitting the transmit control. "This is a waste of time."

“It’s my time to waste, Admiral.”

Nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen for a long, predictable, normal, logical moment and then...

"I think we're getting a transmission," Brecht said, slowly blinking at the panel in front of them as if he too were having trouble believing what he was seeing. “Aren’t we?”

Chekov's fingers went cold as they moved to receive the message. He knew that they had crossed the boundary into the territory of the unpredictable, the bizarre and the illogical even before the picture came up on the small craft's main view screen. He looked at the face on the screen silently, then looked up at the freebooter. The navigator didn't want to be the one to say it.

Brecht, perhaps not fully aware of the absolute impossibility of the statement he was about to make, frowned in surprise. "It's you, Admiral."

The image on the screen suddenly jerked into life, the sound disconcertingly out of synchronization with the grainy picture. It looked like a log tape, or a surveillance recording.

"Mr. Brecht...Sulu— if only you could hear me…" The ensign's alter ego looked momentarily embarrassed. "...And Chekov. Please, what you are about to do will have catastrophic results. You must protect the timeline. Do not attempt to bring the capsule aboard. Summon assistance from Starfleet. Please, leave. Quickly… While you have this chance."

A shout sounded from off camera, accompanied by the angry buzz of damage alerts. The speaker twisted away from the screen, as if to discover what was happening. The movement revealed Goudchaux's bridge behind him. One of its bulkheads suddenly turned incandescent.

"_Bozhe Moi_..." The other Chekov turned back towards them. "What was I going to say? I can only remember that I began to forget at this point. Oh, yes, …"

The screen exploded into random sparkles, then went dead.

There was a moment of silence.

"When I want to remind myself to do something," Brecht commented dryly, "I usually just tie a string round my finger."

Chekov didn't answer.

“Neat trick knowing that your little friend would be here.”

Chekov shook his head slowly as he continued to stare at the blank screen. "I had no idea he would come."

From the source of the transmission something was now emitting a steady tracer signal.

Brecht leaned across him to activate a tractor beam and haul in the source of the tracer.

“Mr. Brecht…” Chekov shook his head disbelievingly. “Mr. Scott will be aware you have activated the tractor beam.”

“And may comment upon the fact after he wakes up from his little nap.” The freebooter gave a tight smile, pointing towards the same controls that Scott had apparently tried to use to deploy tranquilizer gas against him. He then gestured towards Sulu. “Get your friend. Let’s spare him any awkward introductions when everyone regains consciousness.”

“Brecht.” Chekov pointed at the blank screen to remind the freebooter of the incredible message from the future that seemed to have entirely slipped his mind. “Surely you can’t seriously be considering going through with this. Did you not listen to what I said?”

“Admiral.” Brecht spread his hands in a gesture of exasperation. “It’s the treasure of the Orlan Du out there headed towards us. You can’t tell me you’re not the least bit interested in having a peek.”

The Russian set his jaw stubbornly. “Yes, Mr. Brecht. I can. When by a process I cannot even begin to explain, we receive a message from the future warning not only that you and I and this ship may explode but that the timeline itself is possibly endangered, then yes, I can pass by an opportunity to see some jewelry and decorative metalwork -- No matter how nice. No matter how historic. I can pass that up, Mr. Brecht. No, thank you.”

The freebooter sighed and pulled him up by one arm.

“Well, then, Admiral,” he said, urging him forward with his disruptor. “You may just have to close your eyes.”

* * *

“What do you see?”

“Things, Mr. Brecht,” Chekov answered in a heavily ironic imitation of Howard Carter as he knelt inside the glittering cocoon of treasure. “Wonderful things.”

After stopping to lock the still-unconscious Sulu in Chekov’s cabin, the navigator had been puzzled as to why the freebooter had insisted on bringing him along to the cargo bay. 

They had found the pod sitting where the ship's tractor beams had left it in the small cargo bay on the underside of the _Nell_. The container was roughly three metres long, cylindrical with an oddly organic surface — like something dredged coral-encrusted from the ocean floor. That, Chekov supposed, was a form of camouflage, preventing the pod from reflecting clear signals to anyone who might otherwise accidentally find it.

His intended function on this treasure hunt became clear as Brecht gestured him forward impatiently while keeping his disruptor trained on the bay door. “Go on, open it.”

"And what if there are traps set to explode if it is tampered with?” Chekov had objected, staying obstinately in place.

“Well, be careful,” the freebooter advised, switching off the surveillance cameras to the bay with his free hand. “Obviously.”

The ensign rolled his eyes and sighed. “Obviously.”

The pod looked ancient, but Chekov reckoned that three thousand years was no time at all for meteor damage and ion corrosion. It must have looked like that when it was first launched.

He knelt by the pod and examined it. Its outer surface gave few clues. After a moment, he thought he detected a fine seam around its circumference, as if it was meant to break open like a twig snapping rather than like the torpedo tube it resembled. There was no hint of a lock or catch. Or even hinges.

"Open sesame," he muttered ironically.

The pod sighed as air rushed in through the loosened central joint. Chekov stared, startled. At least this madness was displaying a consistency of sorts.

“Get in,” Brecht had ordered, tossing him a portable light. “There’s just one item I need you to find for me.”

After waiting a beat for a description, the ensign prompted, “Which is?”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” the freebooter had assured him, gesturing him into the pod urgently with the disruptor while keeping an eye open for pirates to come storming into the bay.

And so, the ensign had ended up in a miniature Ali Baba’s cavern. Jewels carpeted the interior of the pod in a thick heap and clung to its walls, bright and garish. Even with three thousand years on it, the trove was unmistakably Orion. The ensign found himself reacting like a magpie, picking up first one shiny item then another.

"Still not finding anything?”

"I have found something," the navigator replied, holding out a king's ransom on either arm. "These pieces are not in the condition they are shown in the historical tapes. Several stones are missing."

"That’s not the something we’re looking for, Admiral," Brecht called back a bit irritably. "This isn't an archaeological expedition."

"No, it certainly wasn't," the ensign agreed quietly, picking up another damaged piece. The pattern of plunder was obvious. Cordinium nuggets had been systematically removed as well as mordite, ziphite, and every large chunk of dilithium. Someone was trying to repair a warp drive.

'I wonder who?' Chekov asked himself. Staring at a blank hole in an elaborate head-piece that should have been filled with a translucent jewel, the ensign felt a past with which he never knew he had any connection pulling him like a whirlpool.

Just then his fingers hit on a device about the size of tricorder. In the midst of the glittering horde, the object was remarkable for being so singularly unadorned.

Pulling himself up so that his head and shoulders were out of the opening of the capsule, he held up the homely little box for Brecht to see. “This isn’t it, is it?”

“Ah, Admiral…” The freebooter grinned. “You’re a wonder!”

* * *

“So, this is goodbye?” the ensign asked skeptically, pausing by the door of his cabin.

“Yes, yes,” Brecht replied merrily, urging him forward with the nose of his disruptor.

In a surprising move, after they had removed the mysterious little tricorder-like device from the treasure pod, Brecht had lost all interest in its other contents. He had ordered the ensign to re-seal the container and had re-launched it into space.

“Mr. Scott will be up and along for you soon,” the freebooter promised. “But I’ll be long gone. I’m going to borrow your little friend’s ship. Tell him he can have it back… Just as soon as he can find it.”

“Mr. Brecht…” Chekov objected.

“I don’t know what you’re so upset about, Admiral.” The freebooter shook his head mockingly. “Neither one of us or the ship is about to be blown up and the timeline is ticking on peacefully. A good day’s work in my book.”

* * *

Sulu groaned as his eyes fluttered open. "What happened?"

Chekov shrugged miserably as he came to sit down next to his friend. “Difficult to say.”

“Well,” the lieutenant said, frowning at the unfamiliar, rather bleak surroundings of the cabin the navigator had been confined to as he struggled up to a seated position. “Give it a try, Pavel.”

“One of the pirates — uhm, not actually one of the pirates…” The ensign struggled to come up with a reasonably accurate descriptor. “An associate… sometimes an associate of theirs.. sometimes a competitor… Mr. Brecht, an Orion trader… A least that’s what he claims to be…”

“Mr. Brecht,” Sulu offered as a sufficient identifier.

“Shot you.”

The helmsman nodded and rubbed the bruised spot on his forehead to indicate that he was well aware of that plot point. “How did he get on the bridge?”

“Mr. Scott had flooded the lower decks with knock-out gas. Somehow he avoided being tranquilized and managed to get into the ventilation system and…”

“Shot me.”

“Yes. He then forced me to transmit the code to the security pod holding the treasure.”

The helmsman raised a dubious eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes. We received a transmission from the future…..”

Sulu’s other eyebrow joined its mate. “From the future?”

The navigator gave an apologetic shrug. “Yes.”

“How did you know it was from the future?”

“That was clear contextually.”

“How so?”

“It was… from me.”

“Oh?” From the expression on his fellow officer’s face, it was not clear if this detail made the ensign’s story more or less credible to his fellow officer. “What did you say?”

“That Mr. Brecht was about to do something very dangerous,” Chekov reported. “That we should not retrieve the treasure. That doing so would endanger the timeline. I even seemed to know that you were present and unconscious.”

“Okay.” The helmsman nodded and took a long moment to consider each piece of information. After a moment, he asked, “Did Brecht happen to knock _you_ on head or anything?”

“No.” Given that Sulu was having a hard enough time believing him, Chekov decided against reporting that the ship they were on seemed to be under heavy attack and that the transmission seemed to end with its explosion. “After we listened to the transmission, we brought the treasure aboard. We were able to open the capsule. However, Brecht was only interested in one item.”

“Which was?”

“I could not identify it.” The navigator traced out the rough shape of the item in air before them. “It was a device about so big. It did not appear to be valuable.”

“But that was what he wanted?” Sulu seem to give this information more serious consideration than the admittedly rather incredible story of the transmission from the future.

“He sent the rest back into space,” Chekov reported, “locked us in this cabin, and stole your vehicle.”

“Oh, hell!” the helmsman exclaimed, taking this data very seriously. “Stole my ship? I locked the hatch.”

The navigator shrugged. “That may only serve as a temporary delay. He is quite resourceful in these matters.”

The lieutenant sighed unhappily. “So what now?”

The ensign spread his hand helplessly. “We wait for Mr. Scott and Ms. Alleyn to recover from the knock-out gas that Mr. Brecht used on the engineering deck.”

“On a ship in the middle of Orion space without weapons or shields,” Sulu said, looking up as if he could see through the very solid walls of the cabin to catch glimpses of the Orion raiders that might be lurking nearby.

“Like sitting ducks,” the navigator agreed. “Yes.”

On cue, there was the very welcome sound of engines humming back to life.

"Mr. Scott..!" the _Enterprise _officers chorused in relief.

“It won’t be long now,” Sulu speculated optimistically, clambering to his feet.

“It might take them some time to deduce our location,” Chekov warned, joining him.

The ship rocked beneath them.

“What was that?” the helmsman asked, leaning against cabin wall for support.

“I don’t know.” The navigator frowned. “The engines are mis-phased…”

“That didn’t feel like mis-phasing.” Sulu shook his head. “That felt like…”

The ship shuddered again. It was the strangest sensation Chekov had ever experienced: like all the electrons in his body suddenly re-polarized. He couldn't tell if the sensation lasted for a few moments or a few years. Somewhere, as if from a great distance, he could hear alarms going off, but the alert panels in the walls of the cabin only glowed feebly.

"What was that?" he asked as soon as reality stabilized.

"There's only one thing that feels like that," Sulu said, his face drained of color. "Time travel."


	10. Chapter 10

“Lads, Are you all right?”

As Chekov had predicted, it took more than a half hour for time to regain and maintain its normal rigidity for someone to finally come looking for them.

“Mr. Scott!” They both immediately leapt to their feet. “What happened sir?”

“If you’re both in one piece,” he said instead of attempting an answer. “Come on out of there. Quickly now.”

“Where are we, sir?” Chekov asked, trailing after him in the direction of the dining room.

When the navigator’s question didn’t get answer, the helmsman tried a more to the point, “_When_ are we, Scotty?”

The engineer heaved a deep sigh as he gestured them to precede him. “Aye, that’s the rub.”

Jessie Alleyn stood on the side of the table nearest to them tending some very nasty-looking burns that ran the right side of Khwaja’s face and arm. On the other side of the table doing the same service for Moray Morgain was a rather unhappy-looking Stuart Brecht.

“All you had to say,” he said, levelling an accusing finger at Chekov, “was ‘Watch out, Mr. Brecht - An old lady is waiting to cold-cock you as soon as you step around the corner!’ Would that have been so damned difficult?”

The ensign crossed his arms unsympathetically. “So you did not make your escape?”

“No, I did not,” the freebooter replied rather indignantly. “No thanks to you wasting time moralizing when you could have just given me a simple warning that Esme was just around the corner…”

Chekov spread his hands. “I did not know that.”

“Well, you damned well know it now,” he retorted emphatically.

“Mr. Brecht,” the navigator pointed out with a frown, “if the ship blowing up behind me was insufficient inducement to persuade you to listen to me…”

“What the bloody hell are you two babbling on about?” Scott interrupted.

“Before we recovered the treasure, we received…” Chekov began, then stopped to consider how outrageous the statement was going to sound. “…_seemed_ to receive a message… from me… from the future…”

The engineer sighed and rolled his eyes as if he were thoroughly sick of dealing with impossibilities. “Well, that’s something to look forward to.”

“…Since we’re three thousand years in the bloody past right now…” Jessie Alleyn gave a sarcastic half-laugh and finished in the same spirit.

Sulu held his hands up in a gesture designed to encourage calm and order as he took a seat next to Morgain and Brecht. “Maybe we should try telling this story in order.”

“Don’t get too close to them, Sulu,” the navigator warned, his lips curling into a sneer of distaste.

“Oh, it’s all right, Angel,” Morgain said, smiling nastily with the side her face that didn’t have any burns. “Things are so cocked-up right now. We’re all friends. Aren’t we?”

“For the moment, lass,” Scott granted with very, very, very narrow generosity. “For the moment.”

Chekov frowned as the two pirates both looked first at the empty coffee carafe and then at him expectantly. He put his hands on his hips. “I certainly hope you do not expect me to serve you.”

Morgain batted her good eyelash at him. “No one else ever figured out how to change the filters on the damned thing.”

“And we’re afraid of getting food poisoning now,” Khwaja claimed, still not sounding very credibly piteous despite his wounds.

The ensign might have refused had he not received a nod from Scott directing him towards the galley.

“Go on, lad,” his superior directed. “This story needs a good gallon or three of black Russian coffee to help the brain gallop along with it.”

* * *

When related in proper sequence, it turned out that after locking Chekov in the cabin with Sulu, Stuart Brecht had set off down the _Nell’s_ corridors intending to be as good as his word and exit the ship. Finding the hatch to Sulu’s ship locked, the freebooter had been so intent on circumventing the security system that he was not alert to the approach of Esme — who had probably just gotten him with a hypo rather than the more violent method he’d suggested at first.

The medic, it turned out, had hidden in the ship’s stasis chamber when alarms in the sickbay alerted her to the presence of the release of the tranquilizing gas. After relieving Brecht of the device he had ordered Chekov to salvage from the treasure, Esme had freed her companions on the bridge. Assuming that the device would return the treasure Brecht had jettisoned, they had plugged it into the ship’s sensors.

This turned out to be a terrible error.

Instead of directing the treasure pod back to the ship, the device had taken over the ship’s systems and sent the Nell hurtling backwards through time to the original source of the treasure of the Orlan Du. Doing so had overloaded the device’s systems. An explosion had resulted.

The medic had been already been thrown clear by the ship’s gyrations as it travelled through time. She was relatively unharmed. Goudchaux and Chen were nearest to the blast, however, and were currently under her care in sickbay.

“So,” Brecht said, apparently deciding that there was no use pretending his interest in the mysterious object that he had removed from the treasure pod was casual. “There’s no way you can repair the device?”

“No, Mr. Brecht,” Scott replied firmly. “There’s not enough left of your magic time machine to fix even if I could fix it.”

“Speaking of magic,” Morgain began in a very skeptical tone. “Everyone keeps tossing around this figure of three thousand years in the past… Whose ass did that get pulled out of?”

As the ensign was afraid he might, Scott handed this question off to the navigator with a nod. Were it not for her indelicate phrasing, it was a question that he would have been much more willing to answer.

“Allow me to show you…” There was no way he could possibly finish quickly enough to avoid Khwaja and Morgain exchanging a smirk before he could finish, “…my calculations.”

Since the _Nell’s_ bridge consoles were currently non-operational, he and Sulu had opened portable workstations on the dining table that patched into the pirate ship’s operating systems directly.

Ignoring his audience’s giddy response, Chekov flexed his fingers. It had felt lovely to be doing such work again. A nice, straightforward navigation problem. The time factor didn't make it difficult... once one had accepted that there was a time factor. He projected a star chart to the table top.

"We are roughly halfway between Darius and the Medean cluster," he announced. "Still well within Orion territory — or what will be Orion territory in roughly... I cannot be more precise, but I estimate that we have travelled approximately two thousand, eight hundred, and forty-seven years into the past."

"More than five hundred years before Christ." Scott shook his head in wonder and released a long slow breath. "Before the Roman Empire... You’re sure, lad?"

"Plus or minus three Terran years," the navigator confirmed, then added coldly, "The calculations are here if anyone wishes to review them… since it seems there are those who feel I cannot be trusted to relay information accurately."

"Never mind that." The engineer waved a hand dismissively.

"Wait a minute," Morgain broke in. "Let's just stop this little game of 'let's pretend' right now. Time travel isn't possible. You know that. I know that. It's been proven."

Scott and Sulu glanced at each other and away again. "Well, lass," the engineer replied with a shrug, "it wouldn't be the first time I've done the impossible."

"Oh, so the three Musketeers are all going to stick to the same wild story, huh?" Morgain surveyed the _Enterprise_ officers with a discontented frown. "Unfortunately, that doesn't make you any more convincing. I say we..."

"Check the beacons," the ensign interrupted, offering his earpiece. "We are not picking up standard subspace navigational beacons. Listen for yourself. We are not picking up anything you will recognize. If you speak Orion..."

"I do."

"Ancient Orion," Chekov specified, "you may be able to..."

“But the ship,” Khwaja interrupted, turning to Scott. “Will you be able to repair the ship?”

The navigator noted that the pirate, who was not normally shy about speaking up when it came to opportunities to challenge him, had been notably silent on the rather controversial topic of time travel.

“Before the cloak fails and we’re blown to bits by the first armed merchantman who sails past?” the engineer clarified for him. “Aye, if we can somehow come up with a small fortune’s worth of dilithium.”

“Too bad Uncle Stuie shoved our not-so small fortune’s worth out the hatch, isn’t it?” Morgain asked pointedly.

Brecht, though, was looking at Chekov, who suddenly had become very interested in investigating a minor glitch on one of the small screens in front of him. “Admiral, didn’t you say there were stones missing in the treasure?”

“It was very dark inside the capsule, Mr. Brecht,” the navigator mumbled in reply, busying himself with making sure all the correct buttons were showing green instead of being drawn into yet more far limits of possibility.

“You had a light with you, son,” the freebooter reminded him. “You were trying to tell me something about stones being missing from the treasure… but I didn’t listen to you.”

Although there was a great temptation to hold forth volubly on how little he was listened to and the dire consequences thereof, the uncanny bending of reality that was the inescapable conclusion of being right under these circumstances was so unpleasant that Chekov kept his lips pressed closed tightly and shook his head.

“Lad,” Scott asked firmly. “What sort of stones were missing?”

“Dilithium,” the ensign admitted grudgingly, knowing he was once again entering into a segment of existence where logic put on a pink tutu and did a little fairy dance in circles around him. “Cordinium, mordite, and ziphite.”

“Someone was repairing a warp engine,” Khwaja concluded.

It was easy for a twenty-third century mind with engineering training to conclude that. The hard part was voicing who that “someone” doing the repairs might be…

“Since we’re kind of going in this…kind of … odd… direction,” Sulu began. “I remembered an article I read on the Andorian team who did the excavation that discovered the fourth shard of the Orlan Du medallion. It was found in a natural cavern inside an asteroid in the D’Sanari Belt. That’s exactly what we need right now. It’s not too far away. The mineral composition makes it difficult for sensors to penetrate even in our era. My ship could tow this one inside that cavern so we could do repairs…”

“Aye.” The engineer nodded decisively as he rose. “Let’s leave off with any fantastical speculation for the nonce and take care of practical concerns. Sulu, you and Chekov unmoor your ship and get it ready to take this one in tow. Morgain, go up to the bridge. I’ll see if I can restore a bit of power to the helm. The rest of you lot come with me. We’ll put right what we can.”

As everyone rose to their feet, rallied by this clarity of purpose, only Jessie Alleyn had the nerve to turn and ask the question on everyone’s mind, “You will be able to get us back, though, won’t you?”

The engineer gave his lady love a reassuring smile and pat on the arm as he ushered her through the door. “We’re going to do our best, darlin’.”

Behind him Moray Morgain rolled her eyes as she fell into step behind them. “It’s gonna be a looooong three thousand years,” she predicted.

* * *

“It’s kinda hard to take it all in, isn’t it?”

Although Chekov wasn’t sure what portion of the current insanity they were experiencing Sulu was referring to, he nodded anyway.

They were at the controls of Sulu’s ship, the _Shonagon_. It was a beautifully appointed civilian craft. Chekov judged it to be the size and layout of a yacht. Much of the interior trim of the cockpit was in white with strips of neon-blue detailing and so brightly lit that the navigator found himself blinking like a mole after his time in the _Nell’s_ murky quarters.

During the first hour they’d spent towing the pirate vessel towards the D’Sanari Asteroid Belt, the navigator had kept catching glimpses of himself in the many reflective surfaces on the ship’s tiny, immaculate bridge. He had joked that he looked like a misplaced character from Dostoyevsky.

Sulu had not laughed.

As soon as they were at a point where the helmsman could handle operations on his own, Sulu had offered him the use of the shower in his cabin in a manner that was not so insistent as to be insulting, but firm enough not to brook refusal.

In the same sort of spirit of adamant helpfulness, while the ensign was showering, the lieutenant disposed of the grease-stained, somewhat ragged, and quite definitely outlandish clothing Chekov had been wearing and replaced them with garments that were closer to those in which Sulu himself was attired. The navigator was now dressed in an outfit featuring clean, utilitarian lines, and dark, muted colors — exactly the sort of thing a style-conscious citizen of the Federation might don if he expected to spend some time in the company of pirates while vacationing…

Of course, being clean and decently dressed only highlighted how pitifully bruised the ensign had become during his sojourn on the _Nell_.

With the same sort of big-brother, cheerful-on-the-surface, not-gonna-take-no-for-an-answer, might-be-contemplating-mayhem-against-whoever-did-this-when-he-gets-his-hands-on-them, let’s-get-you-back-on-your-feet-buddy attitude he’d shown towards the clothes and the shower, Sulu broke out a medikit, sat Chekov down at the helm and went to work on his bruises with a derma-regenerator while the navigator monitored the instruments.

It was a very typical Sulu response. Very American.

Chekov winced as the lieutenant ran the medical instrument over a particularly sensitive spot on his back. It wasn’t that the ensign didn’t appreciate the consideration. However being clean and comfortable and treated decently as if everything were normal when he knew things were far from normal made him feel uneasy. Being comfortable made him feel as though the universe was attempting to soften him up for its next surprise strike.

“Sulu,” the navigator began carefully as the helmsman shifted his attention to a lividly blue spot just below his ribcage. “Although it would be improper for us to discuss information that had become classified, there are always rumors among the junior officers about missions of the _Enterprise_ before the time we came aboard.”

His friend smiled and nodded. “That’s always been true.”

“Most civilians believe as Miss Morgain does — that time travel is impossible.” Having put forth the idea of classified missions that occurred before he came aboard and the general idea of time travel as context, Chekov felt confident he could skip ahead without elaborating on precisely which mission he was alluding to. “The astrophysics division fully briefs those of us in the command training program on a theoretical method by which a starship could break the time barrier. It is a rather unorthodox method. I believe it has sometimes been referred to as ‘making a slingshot around a sun’?”

“I think I’ve heard talk about that method.” Although Sulu’s reply was cautiously conditional, his nod made it clear that the two of them were on exactly the same page.

“We spent a good deal of time on this particular theory,” the ensign recalled, amazed that what had at the time seemed like pure esoteric speculation was about to turn out to have a very practical application for him. “The mathematics are quite complicated. Mr. Spock himself explained the algorithms to us and critiqued our work in the simulations.”

The helmsman smiled with relief. “So you’ve been through it?”

“Only in simulation.” He added, a bit reproachfully, “I would not, for example, experience the sensation of time travel and immediately recognize it for what it was.”

“Well, you will now.” The helmsman grinned and gave an apologetic shrug as he rolled Chekov’s left sleeve up to work on the bruises on his arm. “Knowing that math…That may be a very good thing for us…”

“Do you think it is wise, though?” the ensign asked his helm-partner seriously. “If that method of time-travel is possible, it is classified for very good reasons. The people we are with are so…” The Russian found himself at a loss to encapsulate the dangerously disreputable nature of Goudchaux’s scurvy crew. He was silent a moment and let his bruises argue his case for him. “Khwaja, the half-Orion pirate — He has tried to convince me that he is a Secret Intelligence agent. However I do not believe him. His actions are not consistent with such a claim.”

Sulu was a very fair-minded person who liked to assume the best motivations of everyone he encountered. It was, therefore, a mark of how much the bruises he was treating upset him that it took him so long to come up with an explanation of, “Well, if he’s an agent, he is trying to maintain a convincing cover identity as a pirate.”

“Even taking that into consideration, under stress, Khwaja’s priorities are not in line with the good of the Federation. He does not display the depth of knowledge of the Orlan Du I would expect of an Intelligence operative.”

“Unlike your friend Brecht,” the lieutenant pointed out, moving his instrument up to work on a bruise on Chekov’s cheek.

“Unlike Brecht,” the navigator agreed. “Who was introduced to me as an agent of Orions — in the commercial sense.”

“But perhaps in the other sense as well.”

“It’s difficult to draw any other conclusion at this point.”

Sulu frowned. “Very unsettling to think of why the Orions might have such an intense interest in obtaining a time-travel device.”

“And a Starfleet engineer,” the ensign added. “Brecht was sent to collect Mr. Scott for his Orion clients. My abduction was merely collateral damage.”

“Was it?” The lieutenant put his hand on the navigator’s chin and turned his face towards him, looking into his eyes in the manner one would a lover… or a liar. “When Brecht went for the treasure, he came for you. Not Scott. There was the code you were able to send. That message from the future…”

As strange as the truth was, Chekov was still able to meet his friend’s gaze evenly. “All inexplicable phenomena I am currently at a loss to account for,” he answered honestly.

Satisfied that this non-explanation was as much of an explanation as Chekov could give, Sulu smiled a brief apology for doubting him, then ordered a couple of analgesics for him from the ship’s replicators and a small glass of cold vodka to wash them down with. “If we’re caught up in some sort of a time loop, then we may all end up having more of a connection to the Orlan Du and their treasure than we think we do.”

Despite all the warpings of reality he’d already witnessed, Chekov still had to ask, “Do you think such a thing is truly possible?”

The helmsman nodded. “The cavern we’re headed to, the one where the Andorian archeologists discovered the fourth shard: the discovery was controversial because contemporary artifacts were found on the site.”

“It had been raided by smugglers?” the ensign concluded.

“Not exactly.” Sulu gave his helm partner an apologetic smile as he returned the dermal-regenerator to its place in the medikit. “The tools were contemporary in design, but thousands of years old. So you see, us turning out to be the Orlan Du might not only be possible. It might actually turn out to be our simplest explanation…”


	11. Chapter 11

“It’s a fair dark spot for a tomb, isn’t it?”

Chekov grimaced at the pale green glow emanating from the overhead lighting in the rather sepulcher-like rock-walled quarters he was helping the medic convert into a medical facility.

The huge natural space-dock cavern inside the hollow asteroid they’d located in the D’Sanari belt proved to be too good a site for no smuggler or pirate to have ever noticed it before. A small rudimentary base had been hollowed out of the rock. Phaser burns on the surface gave mute witness to the facility having been hastily abandoned after some sort of armed confrontation nearly a quarter century ago.

Scott had been able to re-ignite the base’s life support systems and the ensign had drawn the assignment of escorting the medic and her patients to their new quarters in this dank storage area chosen for its lack of multiple exits.

“These are only temporary quarters, Ms. MacLauren,” the Russian assured his charge, although he was sure of no such thing. “I am certain we will all be in more pleasant accommodations soon.”

Contributing to the tomb-like atmosphere of the setting was the presence of the unconscious bodies of Goudchaux and Chen on their bio-beds. Each was still deeply sedated to ease transport. Layers of thick white dermaplast encased their burns giving them a quasi-mummified appearance. The greenish overhead lighting mixed with the glow of the steri-lights of the biobeds to give their sleeping forms a rather ghoulish luminosity.

“I’ll never see sunlight again,” the medic predicted grimly as she unpacked a box of lab equipment.

“I think your evaluation of Mr. Scott is too harsh,” Chekov reproved.

Again, though, he did this with full knowledge that the engineer had selected the most dank and dismal spot in the depths of the station to deposit his former associates, had done so with dispatch, and had deputized an underling to see the deed done instead of doing so himself.

“Oh, I’m sure your Mr. Scott is a fine man of very high character,” the medic replied, her reedy voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s not him who concerns me. It’s thoughts of the lad from Aberdeen who swore a blood oath to see me dead locking me in the bottom of an airless mine that gives me pause, lad.” 

Chekov took in a deep, disapproving breath, but decided he knew too little to get into a debate on that subject. “I will get some overhead lighting panels for you from the ship,” he promised instead as he turned to leave.

She stopped him with a boney hand on his arm. “I’ll be needing my medicine.”

The ensign frowned in confusion at the containers of medical supplies stacked around him. “Your pharmaceuticals are…”

“No, dearie.” She over-articulated sharply, “My me-di-cine.”

“Oh.” The navigator firmly pulled his arm away, realizing that she was asking him to deliver a supply of the _Nell’s_ store of the illegal drug Illysium.

“Ah, now, don’t be curling your lip,” the medic chided. “My Blue Lace was good enough when it was buying your way out of Miss Jessie’s whorehouse, now, wasn’t it?

Chekov gave her a very deep frown for bringing up that best forgotten incident. “That reminds me,” he said, crossing his arms. “You never told me. Who is Richard?”

Instead of answering, the older woman merely laughed. “Young men can be rather thick about these things,” she observed as she crossed back to her patients. She checked the readings over the head of the interrogator’s bed and then pressed a hypo against the flesh of his unburned arm. The medic smiled enigmatically and shook her head as she looked over her thin shoulder at the ensign. “But you, my dear, are exceptionally so.”

* * *

The acoustics and lighting at the entryway to the next level of the station were such that Chekov could see and hear the two women unpacking containers from the _Nell _before they could see or hear him.

Their voices were strikingly similar, both in timbre and in the dry, bantering attitude they each tended to adopt in conversation.

“Looks like we’re going to be stuck together in close quarters for a while…”

Although Chekov had no desire to eavesdrop, there was something in the weighty tone Moray Morgain assumed in this statement that made him step back into the shadows and allow them another moment alone.

Jessie Alleyn set down the container she was carrying and propped one foot on it. She met the younger woman’s gaze unflinchingly. “Yeah?”

“Sooo…” The one eyed-pirate drew in a long breath, considered for a moment, then blew that breath out. “Let’s stow all the chatter about who’s what to who for a better time and place.”

“Good idea.” Alleyn gave Morgain a tight but genuine smile and quick pat on the shoulder before moving on to the next box. “Focus on the essentials for the present.”

Morgain sighed as if that statement would have made a good encapsulation of the story of her life up to this point. “Right.”

“Such as…” Alleyn grinned broadly as she pulled a couple of bottles out of the open container. “What are you drinking?”

“I drink what we have,” Morgain replied practically. “Even when it’s just rotgut.”

“Looks like we’ve got that in common.” The madam opened both bottles and passed one to the pirate. “Cheers. You’ll have to tell me the story of that eye.”

Morgain gave a short laugh. “The one I lost or the one I managed to keep?”

“If you’re anything like me,” Alleyn predicted after taking a long pull of the whisky, “the only story you’ll tell is one where you were able to hold on to something.”

Morgain raised the bottle in a toast to the woman who might be her mother and might never admit it. “Got that right.”

* * *

“There you are!” Sulu smiled brightly and stepped over to him as soon as he arrived on the next level.

Chekov was a bit puzzled as to why the lieutenant’s eyes kept traveling anxiously over him as one might examine a schoolchild to be sure they weren’t setting out without their textbook or their hair properly combed. It finally occurred to him that the helmsman was — perhaps unconsciously - looking for new bruises or some evidence of fresh injuries and that given recent events, this would seem a sadly necessary procedure.

“I am perfectly fine,” he assured his helm-partner.

“Great,” the lieutenant replied, but his cheeks colored a bit at being caught in this moment of overprotectiveness. “C’mon,” he said, taking the navigator by the arm and guiding him down the corridor. “We need to talk to Scotty.”

They ended up in a control room lined with machinery and computers of obvious Orion design. The engineer was on his knees deep in the guts of a panel he’d cracked open and was busy re-wiring.

“Scotty,” Sulu said after carefully checking that they were alone in the chamber. “Chekov has done slingshot around the sun sims as part of his command training.”

“Ah…” The Scotsman looked up and did his own quick check that they were not being overheard. “Good, then you’ll be able to help us set up the computers when we make our go.”

Chekov looked over his shoulder before he knelt down and handed his superior a laser-wrench from the toolbox behind him. “Do you think it wise, Mr. Scott?”

“Wise?” The Scotsman snorted. “Lad, I don’t know if it’s even possible. Assuming that we can get the stones we need, the _Nell_ will not only have to be repaired, she’ll have to be modified to achieve speeds her designers never intended.”

Sulu joined them under the cover of pulling a bit of wiring closer to the engineer’s grasp. “The _Shonagon_ could do it.”

“Aye.” Although Scott nodded, the look he gave the helmsman communicated that there was an obvious problem the lieutenant was ignoring.

“But we couldn’t get everyone aboard,” Sulu conceded. “We’d have to leave people behind.”

Chekov had a cold sinking feeling in his stomach as he thought of their prisoners on the lower level and the medic’s prediction of never seeing sunlight again.

The engineer shook his head. “None of this lot’s being left behind to run amok.”

The navigator’s relief was short-lived, for immediately an even worse possible plan of action occurred to him. “Then our only alternative…”

“Is to blow ourselves and the two ships to bits,” his superior confirmed. “But given the _Nell’s_ current condition, I’m not certain I could do that cleanly enough to control who knows who from scavenging hunks of who knows what after we did it.”

The navigator nodded. Orion vessels in surrounding systems at this point in history would have the technology to register the explosion of two ships of their size. Competition for the best bits of the wreckage from space salvage operations would be fierce.

“But Mr. Scott, if we steal these things…” He objected, sitting back on his heels and shaking his head. “These jewels… The risk of changing Orion history…”

The engineer answered him with an expansive shrug. “Lad, from what you tell me, we _are_ Orion history.”

* * *

“Admiral.” Brecht grinned and pointed a thumb at the screen behind him. “Take a look at this!”

When a call had come over the communications system that Brecht and Khwaja had found something “really interesting,” Scott, Sulu, and Chekov had headed to their location at a run wondering how they could have been so careless as to let those two end up together unsupervised for any length of time.

The navigator’s mouth dropped open in surprise when he saw what lay beyond the transparent window above the control panel the freebooter and pirate were standing next to. 

The view was of a small bay. There were eight docks. Five of them were empty. Three held tall cylindrical pods of a very familiar design.

“It’s the treasure pod!” the ensign exclaimed. “Three of them!”

“It’s escape pods.” To demonstrate the veracity of his identification, Khwaja activated a series of controls on the panel. In response, a mechanical arm grasped one of the pods and guided it to the center of the bay floor.

In obedience to other commands, the capsule split open to reveal an interior equipped with red padded seating and a variety of controls.

“If this station should experience systems failure or unexpected guests…” the pirate explained. “The outer surface is constructed of the same material as the rest of the asteroid. Helps make it resistant to sensors. It has a communications and guidance system, homing beacon, some basic shielding…”

Chekov frowned. “I did not see any sort of equipment in the one we opened.”

“If we’re going to use it to store treasure,” Brecht suggested enthusiastically, “we’ll strip out the seating and life support systems. Just leave the bare shell.”

“Beef up the security and add a cloak?” Khwaja added.

Scott squinted critically at the pod as if he was not yet won over to the practicality this windfall of the alien smuggler’s gear he seemed to have suddenly inherited. “Aye,” he agreed without zeal.

“It only makes sense,” the freebooter said, rubbing his hands together as the picture clarified in his mind. “We store the treasure in a pod far away from our base. If there’s any sort of tracking device on what we take, it takes them to a bit of empty space, not to us.”

“These pods are password coded,” Khwaja observed, gesturing out to the bay. “How did you get around that, Brecht?”

The freebooter gestured back at the navigator. “Admiral?”

“Oh, of course.” The pirate snapped his fingers and nodded. “We change the password. Now. To something he says. He’s Human. Even the simplest thing that comes out of his mouth will be too exotic for an Ancient Orion who’s never met a Human to guess. Centuries of Orions won’t be able to work out his birthday or shoe size or his grandmother’s maiden name.”

“All right, Admiral.” Brecht took the navigator by the shoulders and ushered him to the control panel. “Let’s hear it. What secret code are we going to use to baffle the generations of would-be Orion treasure hunters?”

Chekov cleared his throat self-consciously. “Open sesame.”

Brecht shouted with laughter while the rest of the company groaned. “Lord, preserve us!”


	12. Chapter 12

“Get a hustle on, Sweetheart.” Moray Morgain gave Chekov’s thigh an overly familiar pat as she passed him in the corridor outside his old quarters on the _Nell_. “Big meeting coming up. That coffee’s not gonna make itself.”

“It will, you know,” he called after her, acidly. “There is a machine.”

“Don’t let her get to you, pal,” Sulu advised, coming up behind him.

“Do not concern yourself,” the ensign replied gruffly as he opened the door to his bare-bones cabin.

“What are you doing here?”

Chekov knelt and ran his finger along the flooring at the far end of the room. “I wanted to retrieve something.”

“Wouldn’t think there would be much.” The helmsman said as his friend removed several small printed computer components from the crevice. “What’s that?”

“I suppose you might call it my “Plan B”.” The ensign gave an embarrassed shrug as he blew grit from the small mechanisms. “I know Mr. Scott has determined now that we are not going to destroy this vessel. However, I was collecting these…”

“Tranfer chips?” Sulu took one wafer-thin bit of printed circuitry from his friend’s hand and examined it with a frown. “To try to create a hack into the self-destruct system? You’d need access to their bridge…”

“Which I did not have at that time,” the navigator affirmed. “And an adinotronic transceiver to readjust the frequencies… which I also did not have access to at that time.”

“But you do now,” Sulu said, very pointedly not returning the transfer chip he was holding.

This, Chekov reflected, was a remarkably awkward conversation. He had, under extreme conditions, taken what he felt was a reasonable action. However, there was no getting around the fact that he was admitting to — no matter how sound and sensible his reasoning — creating a plan for killing himself and everyone on this ship in a rather spectacular manner.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “As I said, I know we have ruled out destroying this ship…”

The lieutenant looked at the components still in his hand. “However…”

This, the Russian realized, was the sticking point. Sulu had discovered him in the midst not of destroying, but of retrieving these odds and ends of circuitry that he had begun to fashion into a self-destruct mechanism.

Chekov was extremely fond of Sulu. They were more than simply fellow officers. They spent an enormous amount of time together, shared many common interests, and had a very warm friendship that went well beyond the mere bonds of duty. It went without saying that he was very appreciative of the heroic effort it took for the lieutenant to have come to his rescue. Therefore it felt like the ultimate extreme of ingratitude to stand stubbornly holding on to the scraps of a plan that would kill both of them…. However, he could not ignore the fact that Sulu’s _attempted_ rescue was not a _completed _rescue at this point and there was an entire timeline at stake.

“I have been through several dramatic reversals of fortune on this voyage to say the least…” he attempted to explain.

Sulu nodded a little sadly. “And you think it’s a prudent option for us to have in our back pocket.”

“Yes.” The Russian nodded, much relieved that the helmsman seemed to be following his thinking.

One characteristic of their friendship was that Sulu was often able to work out Chekov’s reasoning better than the ensign was able to puzzle through the lieutenant’s —which was frequently completely opaque to him. Now, for example, the helmsman seemed to be disappointed that the navigator didn’t feel safer in his company. That wasn’t entirely logical, though. They were in great danger. The pirates were very unpredictable. He was glad of Sulu’s company, but certainly didn’t feel safe. He did feel like apologizing, though. For some reason, he felt like he was being terribly rude…

“Okay…” Sulu took a deep breath and handed the chip back to him. “but after you program the chips, you split them with me so that we both have to input them.” He looked the navigator in the eye resolutely. “It will be like on a starship where three senior officers have to give the self-destruct code. No one person has to bear the decision alone. Okay?”

Chekov nodded. Something inside him unknotted a bit at the thought of creating a two-step Starfleet-like procedure — that would involve getting confirmation from this clear-eyed person whose judgement he trusted — for this terrible act he’d been contemplating .

“Yes,” he said, feeling safer than he had in a long time — although he was agreeing to something that could potentially turn out to be a suicide pact. “That seems wise.”

Sulu gifted him with his dazzling, sunshine smile. “Is there something else bothering you? …I mean, other than everything?”

“Actually…” the ensign admitted, “I had another Plan B as well…I rigged the engines of this ship to broadcast a distress call if they went above warp six. At slower speeds, the message would have been detectable, so... when the pirates used the time travel device it would have triggered the subroutine I placed in the computer."

"And your message could have escaped at any point while we were travelling back in time.” The helmsman frowned and then shook his head. “It would have been distorted by the time dilation.”

“Perhaps.” Chekov bit his thumb uncertainly. "But who knows how many times it was triggered? Over what expanse of time? Perhaps it has been sitting in a surveillance file somewhere for hundreds of years."

"What was the exact wording?" Sulu asked. "Can you remember?"

“It was short, of course. My name, Mr. Scott's, the name of Goudchaux's ship, and Stuart Brecht, and the Orlan Du… Oh, and the Cochrane Institute, and Bidoah."

“Hmm…” The helms crossed his arms. "Without any context… 'Scott' and 'Chekov', two pretty common names, Stuart Brecht, a known Orion sympathizer, a boring Orion legend and a bunch of pirates. There'd be nothing to pin it on until someone input some intelligence about Goudchaux and the medallion, or Brecht and the medallion, and the computer threw out some unbelievable piece of ancient history an Andorian surveillance post picked up half a millennium ago. Intelligence could look at Bidoah, link in the _Enterprise_, and two officers with the relevant names, and make damn sure that you were both invited to the Cochrane Institute..."

The navigator spread his hands. “That is one possible interpretation.”

“It does make it plausible that we might have a Starfleet Intelligence Officer on board,” the lieutenant pointed out.

“Or an Orion Intelligence Officer,” the navigator countered, “or neither.”

“Or both,” they speculated in unison.

* * *

“Don’t move a muscle, mister.”

Although he immediately recognized the voice at the cabin door that had opened unexpectedly behind him, Chekov grimaced and slowly removed his hands from the hidden locker beside Goudchaux’s bunk that he had located and opened with so much difficulty.

“It’s Peterson,” Jessie Alleyn exclaimed merrily, coming over to ruffle his hair.

“No, no, it isn’t,” he corrected, still not daring to change position until he was given leave to do so.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re up to?” Scott demanded, returned his Klingon disruptor to its holster.

“He’s into the Blue Lace.” Alleyn reached around the ensign for the nearest two most incriminating packages before he could conceal them or explain. She sat back on her heels and examined the ensign’s scattered improvised tool-kit. “And a nice job of safe-cracking he’s done too. Poor job on the getaway..” The madam looked up and gave her companion a pointed smile. “But the two of us shouldn’t fault anyone for that, now should we?” Turning back to the navigator, she patted the open locker’s control panel. “It’s alarmed, sweetheart. You can’t hear it, but a red alert went off on the bridge as soon as you started to tamper with the lock.”

Scott gestured her towards the door with a twist of his head. “Give us leave for a private word, will you?”

Alleyn acquiesced with one-shouldered shrug. “Don’t be too hard on him,” she advised, then gave the ensign an overly familiar pinch on the cheek and followed it up with a playful smack. “Except for getting caught, of course…”

As soon as she exited a heavy silence settled between them.

“Ms. MacLauren wanted “medicine”,” Chekov explained into it.

The Scotsman frowned and crossed his arms. “Aye, she would.”

When he had not been able to locate the medic’s stash, it had seemed reasonable to locate a supply of the drugs in the next place he was fairly certain they would be. Sitting here now in front of the plundered locker under his superior’s disapproving gaze, his assumption seemed less reasonable. “I suppose I should have asked.”

“Aye, you should have.”

A hot blush rose in the ensign’s cheeks as, looking across the un-made bunk, he realized that in his singled-minded focus on locating Goudchaux’s safe, he’d ignored a wealth of evidence — including scattered items of lingerie — that Scott and Alleyn had probably claimed this bed as their own. “I did not realize anyone was staying in these quarters.”

The engineer’s eyes narrowed. “And those are your excuses for turning to thievery?”

The navigator’s embarrassment changed to anger in a burning second. “Thievery? This?” he gestured to the safe, fuming. “Considering the circumstances and what we are about to do…”

“…It’s all the more important that you remember who you are and what you are.”

Scott’s words froze Chekov’s outrage cold. As much as the ensign knew he was justified in being angry, what his superior had just voiced was an articulation of the conviction his own soul had been echoing back to him throughout this entire experience.

“When we get back to the Federation,” the engineer continued, “if you’ve had to take questionable actions under my orders or under duress, then the responsibility will be on me or on those that have forced you, but if you start taking initiative for convenience sake in these things, you’re headed headfirst down a rabbit hole to hell.”

“I am so sick of being helpless.” Chekov shook his head violently, feeling near to angry tears. “I just wish I had some sense of control over what is happening.”

“I know.” The engineer nodded. “But it’s best if you don’t. This is a bad business and we’re far from out of it.”

That much was undeniable. In obedience to Scott’s gesture, Chekov gathered his safe-cracking equipment and moved out of the way. However the thorny issue of the medic’s “medicine” still remained. The ensign knew she was dependent and therefore some accommodation would have to be made. The engineer too, seemed to be aware of this difficulty, for he hesitated over the containers of the drug. 

The navigator, knowing that there was a good deal of interpersonal unpleasantness between the two, hated to address the issue straightforwardly. Instead, he found himself saying, “So you knew these people — Mr. Chen, Ms. MacLauren, and Ms. Alleyn? You had prior… associations with them?”

Scott snorted derisively. “Mister Chen? Aye, I had prior association with “Mister” Chen. We were boys together in Aberdeen. I knew Richard Chen from the time he was knee-high…”

Chekov blinked. “Richard? _He_ is Richard?”

“I was one of the few who would associate with him.” The engineer recalled as he returned a micro-driver that had rolled beyond the ensign’s reach. “Most in our neighborhood would have naught to do with his family since they came from far away and had ways that seemed strange.”

“From far away?” The navigator raised a speculative eyebrow. “China?”

“No. Glasgow.”

“Oh.” Chekov frowned. Moray Morgain was certainly right. At unpredictable intervals, this journey did seem to turn out to be very strangely interlinked and very weirdly Scottish…

“It was an unforgiving place for young ones.” Scott was turning the packet of Illysium over in his hand. “Very hard. And we… well, we got into more than our fair share of scrapes… Jessie, Richard, and I — but we stuck together… Sometimes just a step or two ahead of the authorities. Esme and the troubles she brought.. Well, she was older than we three… She didn’t come along until later. She was always a mixer, that one. Always causing trouble.”

“And...Esme was …attracted to… Richard?” Chekov made a face. It was difficult to think of these middle-aged adults as having been teenagers who got into trouble and had love affairs…and even had first names… Maybe the medic was right. Maybe he was being exceptionally thick…

“She made him believe so,” Scott said as he stacked a small pile of the drug containers. “What was certain was that she hated Jessie…and was none too fond of me. Somehow she set it up so that a little adventure the three of us had planned fell to pieces. It was supposed to come apart so that I would take the fall. But things didn’t go exactly as planned and Jessie was the one who got caught.”

It was clear that this memory pained him greatly. The engineer paused and shook his head at the pyramid of blue bricks he’d stacked.

He gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, what a scene we made, the four of us, swearing bloody vengeance on each other the day before she was sent away — making a pact to destroy each other down the ground we stood on should we ever all stand in the same room again…”

Chekov tilted his head to one side. “But you and she..?”

“I couldn’t stay angry,” the engineer assured him. “I knew I hadn’t betrayed her and I was dying of love for her — as you only can at that age. I wrote her every day in the juvenile rehabilitation center until she finally wrote me back. We had an understanding for when she got out, but… I didn’t stop getting into scrapes… I don’t know if Esme helped me out on my next brush with the law, but I had to hop a freighter to Titan to squeeze out of it that time. Forged papers that edged my age up enough that I could sign on as a merchant marine on the _Lydia Lee_. It was the making of me. I had a good captain. Saw talent in me. Taught me what the inside of a book looked like.”

“And you met Brandon Goudchaux,” the ensign countered, pointing out something that had turned out to be a serious downside in the present circumstances.

“He didn’t seem such a bad sort at the time,” Scott said, shaking his head. “But it was rough company. And he was fast and easy when it came to regulations. And he did have a bit of a jealous streak. He certainly wasn’t as fond of me as he pretended to be at the time.”

Chekov reached past the engineer and handed him a holo he’d found in Goudchaux’s safe of one of the chief engineer’s official Starfleet portraits. Angry red, black, and green lines and been etched into the surface repeatedly to violently deface the Scotman’s smiling features. “That is something of an understatement, I’d say…”

* * *

"That's Currumin,” Scott said pointing to a spot on the holographic representation of a starchart being projected onto the surface of the table they were standing around in the control center of the station base. “And there's Plaor. They're a good week apart using the fastest ships available in this time, but..."

"Thirty three hours at warp 4," Chekov filled in, picking up his cue smoothly. “The ancient heart of Orion territory was unusually densely packed with type G stars. None of the worlds was very far from its neighbors.”

"We start with the Olasorda Palace complex," the engineer announced as the holograph zoomed in on Currumin.

"I can’t believe we’re doing this," the ensign muttered quietly to himself.

Not too quietly, however, to avoid drawing an unappreciative look from his superior officer. “Perhaps you’ll be so good as to fetch another pot of coffee,” the engineer suggested unkindly.

“Yes, sir,” the navigator replied, chastened.

“As I was saying, the Olasorda collection will provide us with our largest haul of dilithium in one go. It’s not all that we need by a long shot, but it’ll put us well on the road to getting the _Nell_ back up to speed.”

Stuart Brecht squinted at the engineer. “You seem pretty confident that we’re going to be good at stealing jewels right away. Don’t you think we might need to pick out a smaller target first? Practice a little?”

“Well, if we’re the Orlan Du…” The Scotsman shrugged. “We just have to do what they Orlan…did, don’t we?”

The individuals gathered around the table exchanged glances.

“Hey, if you want me to steal things, I can steal things,” Moray Morgain said holding up her hands, “But I’m not a history buff.”

“That’s a coincidence,” Sulu commented wryly. “I’m a history buff, but I don’t usually steal things.”

“If you’d let me keep my ship,” Stuart Brecht objected over the acid reply she might have made, “we’d have my book on the Orlan Du.”

“The Teacher Goltan book?” Chekov asked.

Khwaja made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, every Orion child has read that book.”

Brecht snapped his fingers hopefully. “Then you know it!”

“I don’t have it memorized.” The half-Orion snorted with frustration. “I thought we were going to locate this treasure in the present, not steal it from beneath the very noses of the Great Houses in the ancient past.”

“Admiral.” The freebooter turned and pointed at the ensign. “You read the book and have a very fine memory for amazingly insignificant detail.”

Morgain put a hand on one hip. “Mr. Not-a-Thief-History-Buff did too, I’ll bet.”

“Yes,” Chekov granted, not liking the “amazingly insignificant” part very much. “However part of the mystique of the Orlan Du was that the Ancient Orions never quite understood how their robberies were accomplished.”

“The accounts were contradictory,” Sulu concurred. “Often completely speculative.”

The navigator sighed and shook his head pessimistically. “We are going to change history.”

“Blast the damned Orions, and the damned Orlan Du, and their damned history! It could stand with a good deal of bloody changing,” Scott growled impatiently. "Switch the damned map to the palace at Plaor, Chekov."

There were times when it was one’s duty to defend the integrity of the timeline with one’s life. There were other times when it was more appropriate to just make the coffee, set up the map, and shut the hell up. The current situation clearly fell into the latter category. 

“Yes, sir,” the ensign said, keeping his opinions firmly to himself.

“All right now.” The engineer’s voice dripped with sarcasm as the new holographic floorplan of a maze of buildings lit the table top in glowing neon lines. “If you must have your wee trial run, then how’s this for size? There’s naught but one crystal and some monazite. Do we have the balls for this or must we waylay a few garbage scows before you decide got the belly for a real caper?”

“Calm yourself, Monty.” Jessie Alleyn leaned forward, examining the diagram with interest. “This is better…”

“Scott,” Brecht began expansively. “No intention of questioning....”

“Shut your mouth for a minute.” Alleyn cut off his apology abruptly. “Let me look at it.”

The freebooter stepped back, giving the madam a little bow, “By all means…”

“Well, as I see it,” Alleyn said pointing towards the outlines of a squat square-ish building next to one of the more eccentrically shaped audience chambers. “The key is that they’ve put the communications center here on the palace grounds. We probably won’t be able to pull off the scheme I’m thinking of more than once, but perhaps that won’t matter… We’ll need to have exact replicas of the jewels we’re going for and some incendiaries… Something they can’t detect well… I’d say R-4 would do…” She pointed to a wire-framed tower. “We’re going to place it about so high on that power relay. It doesn’t have to be enough to blow the relay, mind you. It’s just got to make a good show. So a small amount of R-4 that we could beam in around an hour before we start the operation… Security at this time in Orion history is going to be good enough that we won’t be able to hack it from orbit, but we will be able to get into that communications grid. We cause some glitches. Again, nothing big. Just some real headaches. We let those simmer for around an hour until they’re pulling out their hair. Then we send in two of our own, disguised as low level maintenance contractors who someone’s boss has hired to help deal with the crisis. In the confusion, our guys will be able to access their main system…”

Chekov blinked in alarm. “You are looking at me. I cannot pass for an Orion.”

“You’ll be wearing a hood, angel,” Alleyn informed him with the confidence of someone who had lived among Orions for years. She had watched enough of their frequently dreadful historical dramas to have as much assurance about how to costume someone as an Ancient Orion as she would dressing a Human as an Ancient Roman. “During this period, low caste palace workers wore clan uniforms with these sort of leather helmets that covered most of their faces. There’s a nose piece, a chin strap. Just keep your mouth closed and let Khwaja do all the talking and you’ll be fine, Peterson.”

“I’m not Peterson,” the navigator objected strenuously.

“You’ll still be fine,” she assured him mercilessly. “So you’ll hack into the Palace security system. When you’re in, you signal your friend Sulu in orbit in the _Shonagon_. Simultaneously as you deactivate the power grid and we beam our burglar down to make the swap, Sulu blows the R-4 so it looks like the power has gone down because the power relay was destroyed. The explosion will also draw the Security forces. Burglar beams in, gets jewels, beams out. Our men disguised as maintenance workers just pack their tools and walk out of the building and we pick them up at a rendezvous point.”

“Well, well, well…” Morgain gave the madam an only half-mocking round of applause. “Look who knows how to plan a jewel heist.”

“Beginners luck,” Alleyn assured the pirate. “Speaking of knowing how, I had you figured as our burglar.”

“Sure.” The pirate shrugged agreeably. “Just as long as I don’t have to put on a slave girl outfit.”

Alleyn grinned evilly. “Get in and out of the palace with the jewels fast enough and you won’t have to,” she promised.

“Oh, she’s a keeper,” Brecht said to Scott, nodding in Alleyn’s direction.

“She’s a right canny one when you’re in a spot of bother,” the engineer agreed.

“Yes.” Khwaja looked down at the holographic representation of the priceless jewels they were supposed to steal then over at Chekov and rolled his expressive turquoise eyes. “What could possibly go wrong?”


	13. Chapter 13

“This is certainly interesting,” Chekov commented as he and Khwaja strode purposefully down the sunbaked, brick-paved pedestrian walkway leading towards the comparatively drab-looking entrance of the palace’s communication center.

The _Shonogan_ had made a couple cloaked runs of the royal city of Isin with sensors on full scan to confirm — as well as they could — that their information was up to date before the start of their mission. Among many other details, they’d had to adjust, they did find that Alleyn was correct about low caste workers and their leather helmets — although there was almost infinite regional, professional, and even personal variations that they found they needed to account for on this planet and in this particular city to get a style that would go unnoticed.

Although he felt the helmet was terribly hot and uncomfortable, Chekov was pleased that it did have built-in protective eyewear that automatically filtered the mid-day sun’s brightness down to a more comfortable level.

The headgear that had been painstakingly recreated for the two of them to wear had been appropriately emblazoned on the forehead with the house-mark of the noble from whose company they would shortly claim to have been summoned to lend assistance to the communications crisis they were causing. 

They were dressed in what purported to be uniforms by contemporary Orion standards. Their outfits consisted of knee-length pants and short-sleeved, cropped, open-chested bolero-like jackets made of bright teal-colored leather-ish fabric with black trim and generously decorated with oversized silver studs. On the ship, the effect of the costume had been rather fantastically comic, but here, the two of them didn’t merit a second glance from the even more colorfully garbed passersby as they strolled between the red and gold striped columns lining the pathways between the gloriously festive palace gardens blooming on either side of them.

To complete his disguise, the navigator had been compelled to shave his chest, arms, and legs to simulate the look of the more typically hairless Orion male. He had also been injected with a substance to turn his skin a bright bronze color — which, he was given to understand, was a not uncommon racial type among Ancient Orions. 

Although all the majority of Orions he’d met up to this point had green skin tones, he knew from his reading that at earlier points in their history there had been greater racial diversity. What the history books could not convey, however, was how much of that variety had been lost. Walking among them now, Chekov could see that not only was his false ginger-y skin unremarkable, but Khwaja’s exotic purple hue was just another flower in the garden of colorful peoples that made up the rainbow of what could be considered a proper color of Orion…

“Don’t talk,” the pirate ordered.

“Excuse me?” the ensign retorted indignantly. 

As a sensible precaution against possible capture, he had taken the time to take a hypno-learning crash-course on the proper dialect of the Ancient Orion language for this city on this planet from the computer in the _Shonogan_. Hypno-learning wasn’t the best, most reliable or complete way to learn a language. And yes, the knowledge would start to fade in about two weeks, but hopefully it would keep him from getting into another disastrous situation such as had happened on Quondar.

“Please don’t speak Orion,” Khwaja requested without slowing or making eye contact.

“But I…” The navigator protested.

“Learned from tapes, I know,” the pirate replied shortly.

“Yes.” The ensign slowed to halt and crossed his arms defensively. “Is there something wrong with the way I am speaking?”

Khwaja gave an exasperated sigh as he stopped, removed his helmet and used it to wipe his forehead. 

Unlike Chekov, who had absolutely drawn the line at doing so, the pirate had shaved his head. Standing in the bright sunlight against a backdrop of coral and amaranthine flowers twining up gold and carmine brickwork, Khwaja looked 100% authentically — and a bit gloriously — Ancient Orion. 

“Grammatically, no,” he granted, the corners of his lips contorted into a rather odd expression as he looked off into the distance.

“Then what?” the navigator demanded.

The pirate checked that they were not being closely observed before leaning in to explain, “You’re lisping.”

The ensign frowned and shook his head. “That is not possible.”

“It shouldn’t be,” the Orion agreed with some vehemence. “People who learn from hypno-tapes just learn. Perfectly. Usually.”

The Russian shrugged disbelievingly. “I may have some slight accent perhaps…”

“Just stop. Please. Okay?” Khwaja ordered in Standard, putting a hand over the ensign’s mouth. Satisfied that he was going to be obeyed, the pirate then resolutely donned his leather headgear once more, took the navigator by the shoulders and pointed him in the direction of the communications center. “Until I tell you.”

* * *

“We’re the technicians from Daq Varsion.”

Chekov couldn’t help but gawk a bit at the reception area of the communications center. Even this very prosaic office building had a certain barbaric splendor. The same vivid color schemes that had characterized the gardens outside were continued in the inside. It was very much as though someone had decided that St. Basil’s Cathedral would make as good an interior for a building as in Moscow it made for an exterior.

Despite the number of people behind him hurrying about chattering excitedly, the Orion at the front desk gave Khwaja and the navigator a narrow look. “I’ve got no order for techs from Varsion.”

“I do,” the pirate replied, helpfully pulling their carefully forged authorizations from his toolbox.

The Orion didn’t even uncross his arms. “I don’t.”

Khwaja smiled and shrugged as he returned his papers to his toolbox. “Okay,” he said, gesturing Chekov towards the door.

The ensign made an “oh well” gesture as he joined the pirate.

Part of the beauty of this part of Alleyn’s plan was that the communications glitches would continue to intensify until they were allowed to enter this facility, but no other part of their plan would commence, therefore there was a certain amount of leeway available at this point.

“Wait, wait!” another Orion called after them. “Are you here to work on the substation relay failures?”

“Yeah,” Khwaja answered, half-turning back in the direction of the front desk reluctantly as if he’d much rather use the mix-up as an excuse to go sneak off for a lunch break somewhere.

“I don’t have any order,” the first Orion objected to the newcomer.

“There’s a substation relay failure, genius,” the second snapped. “Just scan them through.”

“Scanners are down,” the front desk Orion grumbled.

Chekov had to look down at the floor so that he would reveal no sign of how pleased he was that the small scrambler field he’d set up seemed to be working well.

“Just do a manual check then,” the middle-manager Orion ordered.

“Okay.” The front desk Orion tapped the surface in front of him. “Let’s see those tool boxes.”

This was a bit of a concern. Mixed in with the standard toolkit were twenty-third century instruments these Orions would have never seen before.

Sure enough, after sorting through the top layer of Khwaja’s equipment, the front desk Orion pulled out an instrument and held it up. “What’s this for?”

“Circuit binder,” the pirate answered, rolling his turquoise eyes in middle-manager’s direction in a manner that clearly said, “Can you believe this idiot didn’t recognize that?”

“And this?”

“Ask your wife,” Khwaja leaned in and replied lewdly. “She’s got two in the table by your bed.”

“Go on,” front desk Orion growled as the pirate and middle-manger Orion had a good laugh at his expense. He gestured the navigator forward. “And you.”

Chekov took a deep breath and placed his toolkit on the desk, hoping that this embarrassment might discourage the Orion from making further inquiry.

Unfortunately, this did not prove to be the case.

“Okay, what’s this?” Front desk Orion asked, holding up an obviously non-period instrument.

Khwaja gave the navigator a confident nod. “Tell him.”

Not able to think of a clever lie, the ensign began honestly, “It is an alternating plasma repair…”

Front desk Orion’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, sweet Mardinar’s left ball!” he exclaimed and then began to laugh very loudly.

“Excuse me?” the navigator asked indignantly.

“Excuth what?” Front desk Orion echoed back to him, wheezing with laughter.

Middle-manager Orion was also laughing. They were both guffawing so hard they had to lean against each other. People who were scurrying behind them started to notice.

Khwaja reclaimed Chekov’s tool and toolbox and pulled the outraged ensign forward through the reception area by the arm. “Come on.”

“They were being very rude,” the navigator sputtered in Standard once they were inside a lift car.

“Yeah,” the pirate agreed, keying in instructions to carry them to the lower level.

“If I was, as you said, speaking with a bit of a lisp, then that is a speech impediment,” the navigator said, putting his hands on his hips irately. “Nothing to be mocked.”

“Yeah.” Khwaja gave him an encouraging pat on the back and explained carefully as the lift doors opened, “Lucky for us, those guys were what you in Standard call “assholes.” C’mon.”

* * *

A difficulty in putting together this mission had been that although the _Shonagon_ was outfitted in a manner that was astonishingly similar to a military vessel, it was only the size of a recreational craft. Therefore, there were some stark limitations on some features available. For example, it did have transporter capabilities, but had a very limited range and could only beam one person at a time.

Because of the greater need for speed in entry and exit for the team member actually stealing the jewels and potential exposure to enemy fire, it had made sense that beaming was being reserved for that individual. However, as the time began to draw near for the action to commence, Chekov could not help but wish for a full-sized transporter room that would instantly materialize them all out of harm’s way at once.

In the chaos their malfunctions had caused in the communications center, he and Khwaja had little trouble making their way to chamber on the lower level that diagrams showed shared a wall with the room that housed the security system for the part of the palace complex where the treasure was stored.

Orion love of ornamentation in this period and in this city extended even to their computers. Therefore the row of large, upright computers that lined the walls of this chamber — with their mock bejeweled controls and ornamented frames — looked more like game machines one might find in an arcade on Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet than their dull grey counterparts one might find on a starship.

Khwaja and Chekov quickly found and removed a side panel of one of the uprights so that the ensign could crawl inside and work unobserved. In the largely hollow and empty interior, the navigator removed the false bottoms from his and the pirate’s toolboxes and assembled a portable device that would allow him to perform the sort of pinpoint scans and field dampening operations that were necessary for the success of their mission.

“There.” Khwaja removed an entry pad from the control panel on the surface above Chekov’s head. He smiled down at the ensign through the opening he created. “A little more light and oxygen for you. We don’t want our little kitten to suffocate. Do we?”

The ensign scowled up at him as he removed the uncomfortable leather headgear and ran his fingers through his sweat-slicked hair. “Thank you.”

The pirate laughed softly. “You still don’t like trusting me, do you?”

Chekov shook his head as he initiated an assessment of the data collection capabilities of the neighboring systems. “This is neither the time nor the place for you to renew your attempts to convince me that you are an Intelligence Agent, Mr. Khwaja.”

“Oh?” The pirate’s laugh was incredulous this time. “So it gets a little backup from Scott and Sulu and it’s decided it doesn’t have to believe me now?”

Chekov kept his eyes on his data as he re-channeled the tiny computer’s analysis into a targeted attack on the security systems vulnerabilities. “When we return to the Federation, you will be able to substantiate your claim. Until then, however…”

"You just don’t think there’s any way I can prove it to you… Mmm."

Khwaja went quiet for long enough that Chekov decided that either he’d made his point and found a way to shut him up or someone had entered the room. After a few moments though, the half-Orion was back. "You know the navigation security codes for the _Enterprise_, don't you?"

The ensign’s fingers lifted off his data entry pad in surprise.

"No!" he replied, meaning “No, I would not disclose that in a million years” instead of “No, I don’t know.”

"Don't worry. I'm not going to ask you to tell me them. I just want to establish something. If you needed to prove to me that you're who you claim to be, you could tell me those codes."

"I don't care if you believe..."

"But Mr. Scott, for example, wouldn't know them."

Chekov merely narrowed his eyes, waiting to see where this was leading before he got involved in further denials and mis-directions.

"And Sulu wouldn't know all of them, or would he?" Khwaja was silent long enough that Chekov eventually answered.

"What is the point...?"

"The point is, that if I could have got them from him, there's no point me using them to convince you that I am who I say I am."

"Lieutenant Sulu should not know the codes which were valid the last time I was on duty on the _Enterprise_. He was not on the bridge that day. But..."

"Theta four three, seven rho. Correct?"

Chekov felt cold, and nauseous. He rested his hands against the small computer in front of him. He started when it buzzed a signal that it had completed the instructions he’d given it.

Shaking his head slightly to focus, the navigator took a communicator out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “Chekov to _Shonagon_. We are ready to commence operations.”

“At freaking last,” Moray Morgain’s voice crackled through the tiny speakers.

“Security subsystems have been neutralized in the treasury,” he reported. “There are two guards in the room where you will materialize facing away from the display. One of them appears to be asleep.”

“The other will be joining him soon,” the pirate lady promised.

“Standing by for countdown for full power blackout on your mark, _Shonagon_.”

The voice that replied was that of the pilot of the craft. “Standby for countdown.”

Just hearing that voice made this crazy world feel a fraction more stable. “Good luck, Sulu,” the navigator said.

“See you soon,” his helm-partner replied in typically optimistic fashion. “Thirty second countdown on my mark… and… Mark.”

Chekov pressed a button and watched as green neon numbers lit the display in front of him.

Khwaja closed the opening above him and started to work on the bolts holding the side panel in place. He didn’t have enough time to get the last one unscrewed before everything went completely dark.

From elsewhere in the suddenly pitch-black lower level, Chekov could hear the sounds of Orion communication workers in distress. As he quickly disassembled his portable computer, he felt rather distressed himself. If Khwaja/Hanton had this sort of means to prove his identity as an agent, why hadn’t he done so sooner? Why not do so immediately?

“Stay calm, little kitty,” the pirate cooed mockingly. “We’ll have you out of this nasty box in a moment.”

Chekov then remembered that Brecht had drugged him while he was aboard the _Black Beauty_. Tanctin shouldn’t have been enough to make him reveal those security codes, but… who knows? Perhaps Brecht had lied about what he had used…

“There we go!”

The ensign blinked, momentarily blinded when the last screw fell away and the panel was removed. Another handy aspect of the Orion headgear that he’d forgotten about was that the built-in eyewear had a ring of bright micro lights around their rims that could be activated in these sorts of circumstances.

"Poor little blind kitty!" Khwaja laughed as he reached into the interior and picked the ensign’s mislaid helmet up off the flooring and helped him into it.

In the limited lighting, the pirate’s face was bizarre — just white teeth and bright glowing circles for eyes.

"Oh, Chekov, I know so much more about you than you might imagine,” he boasted jovially as he expertly snapped and tightened all the various fastening and buckles that were necessary to fit the headgear in place correctly. “School friends. Grades at the Academy. How many demerits, and why you got each one of them. What my good friend Jim Kirk said in your last six monthly appraisal — if you aren't too modest to want to talk about that. He has a soft spot for you, Chekov." The pirate’s mouth stretched into a wide, white grin as he tightened the strap under the navigator’s chin. "Like I do."

Chekov ignored this taunting as he activated his own eye-lights and pulled away. "At which university did my mother obtain her doctorate?" he challenged, snapping half of his disassembled computer to the bottom of his toolbox.

"Presumably that's something you don't remember having told any of your shipmates,” Khwaja/Hanton concluded, doing the same for his half. “Ulan Bator, under Professor Semeonova. Late sixteenth century ceramics."

"But that is a matter of public record..." the ensign dismissed, crawling out on his hands and knees.

"Then why the hell waste my time asking?" Khwaja snapped as he helped him to his feet.

Chekov scowled at him — although a scowl couldn’t have been very visible though the helmet. "Very well. As a first year engineering project at the Academy, Niles Johnson and I built a prototype shuttle. What did we call it?"

The pirate/Intelligence Agent gave an exaggerated sigh as he led the way to the emergency exit. "Its registration was FLC 4126,” he said, taking hold of the first rung and climbing rapidly upwards. “So I imagine you called her _Falcon_, right? But you didn't work with Niles Johnson. Your partner on that project was Britta Earle."

Chekov didn’t move at all for the few moments it took for Khwaja/Hanton to open the hatch to the upper level.

“You coming?” the pirate/Intelligence Agent asked. “Or you decide you like it in the dark?”

Rather than address that question on a philosophical level, the ensign decided to just go with. “I’m coming,” and head up the ladder.

Communication workers were rushing in all directions. The Orions who had been manning the front desk were gone. Uniformed Orions with what were unmistakably weapons were now in place at the entrance.

“Evacuate!” One of them ordered as Khwaja and Chekov approached, gesturing towards the back of building.

The pirate pointed towards the mark on his headgear. “We’re House Varsion.”

“Evacuate!” the officer repeated, clearly not giving a damn.

“Yes, sir,” Khwaja apologized to the business end of his weapon.

"Obviously,” the ensign continued quietly in Standard as the two of them blended into the crowds pouring out of buildings and into the streets of the royal city. “Since you are in military intelligence, you are not going to tell me anything unless it is absolutely necessary." To Chekov, this was irritatingly even more convincing than being given the _Falcon's _registry details.

The pirate looked up as Orion military craft screamed overhead in the direction of the power relay tower. Billowing smoke could be seen in the distance. "Correct."

“Then I will summarize for us both,” the navigator said as they shouldered their way through the crowds — some of whom were actively fleeing, some of whom had stopped to gape back in the direction of the burning tower. "Three thousand years ago, the Orion hegemony was about to become unified. The great houses were beginning to cooperate. The activities of the Orlan Du, the theft of valuable property, and the invasion of the hereditary strongholds which that involved, was enough to destroy the tentative treaties and alliances which had been formed. The Orions effectively took a big backward step, from which they have not yet recovered."

"And..." the pirate prompted as they crossed into an alleyway and out of the main accumulation of evacuees.

"And that means that when the Federation became capable of interstellar flight, instead of confronting a vast, unified Orion empire, something like the Klingon and Romulan civilizations which border the other two sides of UFP space..."

"There is room for expansion in that direction.” Khwaja nodded as they came around the corner and behind a row of market stalls. “Instead of being squashed between three evenly matched powers — squashed out of existence altogether most likely — the Federation and its various allies had room to grow. As you've realized, kitten, the Orlan Du's little horde of treasure is of no significance at all, compared to that."

Chekov swallowed bile. "And if you are truly a Starfleet Intelligence agent, you want all that to happen.”

Khwaja smiled enigmatically. “And if I am anything else, I will try to prevent it with every fiber of my being.”

At that moment, the _Shonagon_ de-cloaked with a shimmer in an abandoned lot about twenty feet in front of them. The hatch opened to reveal Moray Morgain.

“Piece of cake,” she bragged, holding up two jewels as if they were giant earrings. “Let’s blow this dump.”


	14. Chapter 14

“You’re quiet,” Sulu observed as he dropped the _Shonagon_ into a high orbit of the upper atmosphere of the next planet whose treasury they were slated to raid.

“I am thinking about the Golden Horde,” Chekov admitted as he deployed the yacht’s sensors in a targeted sweep of the planetary defense network grid.

The lieutenant chuckled. “Well, it’s always apparent from your conversation that you spend a good amount of time silently reviewing Russian History and now I’ve finally caught you doing it…”

The navigator gave his helm-partner a narrow look for this uncalled for levity. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry.” Sulu smiled a good-natured apology for his teasing. “Why are you thinking about the Mongols?”

“While we were in Isin, Khwaja began to make some of his usual intimations that he is an Intelligence Agent. When I challenged him on that, as proof, he revealed that he knew a great deal of personal data about me. It was…” The ensign stopped and shook his head in remembrance. “… quite unnerving.”

“And now you’re unnerved…” The helmsman looked disapproving but unsurprised as he adjusted their course. “But still not convinced?”

“On reflection, it is a bit odd that he offered information that was only specific to me,” the navigator said as he launched a discrete sensor probe through a weak area of security grid. “And I have been interrogated by both Brecht and Goudchaux since my abduction.”

Sulu’s eyebrows rose. “Brecht too?”

Although in their speculations on who might or might not be a spy, the lieutenant tended to favor the freebooter, he had struck up a kind of easy working relationship with Brecht. It was quite natural to do. Brecht, unlike Khwaja, was very personable and approachable.

Despite having passed up the bulk of the treasure in favor of trying to steal the time travel device — which seemed to them to be more like the actions of a spy than a thief — Brecht had taken no one aside — not even Scott, the ranking officer among them — and attempted to gain more authority in the decision-making process by identifying himself as an Intelligence Agent.

In their private discussions on the matter, Sulu had expressed the opinion that he felt like Brecht’s not saying anything — even after having potentially blown his cover — was behavior more typical of a spy than Khwaja’s revelations to Chekov. These the lieutenant had dismissed as attempts to manipulate the navigator to reveal information he might have about the location of the treasure. Sulu had even dropped a few very tactful hints that he thought Khwaja’s “spy act” was just a rather wrong-headed and heavy-handed attempt at seduction.

Chekov was beginning to get rather vexed with Sulu. This was, of course, despite the fact that it was a great comfort to have the lieutenant here. Communication between the ensign and Mr. Scott was still rather strained because of the trust that had been eroded between them as a result of their captivity. In addition to this inhibiting tension, between his work repairing the _Nell_ and his preoccupation with Ms. Alleyn, the engineer simply wasn’t available very often for conference.

However Sulu at times seemed almost ludicrously detached from the desperate situation they found themselves in the midst of. On occasions, Chekov found himself wanting to shake the helmsman by the shoulders and shout at him to try to wake him up to the fact that what they were experiencing wasn’t a game or an exotic vacation.

“Brecht drugged me while I was on his ship because I had claimed to know the location of the treasure,” the navigator informed his friend sharply as he routed information starting to come in from the sensor probe to the _Shonagon’s _main computers. “Sulu, we can’t trust any of them.”

“So, we don’t,” the lieutenant replied firmly. “We get the dilithium we need and we get the hell out of here.”

The navigator sighed and shook his head. “Neither of which we can accomplish easily on our own. We must have some cooperation.”

“Which leaves us vulnerable,” the helmsman concluded for him. “Is that why you were thinking about Batu Khan and the Rus Princes?”

“No.” Chekov routed telemetry data onto the main viewer for the helmsman’s reference. “The planet we visited was beautiful. Far more beautiful than any Orion holding than I have ever seen in our time. And although the individuals I conversed with were not outstanding representatives of the intelligence and courtesy of that race, one could see it was an orderly, prosperous and quite advanced civilization.”

They were both quiet for a moment as the steady beep of the incoming data continued to sound. They were caught in one of the great “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” paradoxes that time travel theorists at the Academy loved to set up and expound on for the edification of cadets. Any actions they took — or didn’t take — were now going to irrevocably change Orion history forever. The question now was how much change and how bad that change was going to be…

“Historians are divided over whether or not the Orlan Du had anything to do with the start of the wars between the Great Houses,” the lieutenant reminded him.

“Just as the impact of the Golden Horde on the development of Russia as a European power is debated to this day,” the navigator agreed. “However, if I as a Russian were to go back in time and be asked to serve as a scout for the Mongols to help bring about the defeat of the Prince of Moscow knowing the suffering it would cause not only for those people but for scores of generations to come, could I do it?”

Sulu frowned at the beautiful cloudscape on the main viewer. “So you think Khwaja…?

”I do not know if he is an Intelligence Agent,” Chekov said, looking down through the viewer at a sparkling ocean lapping against the shores of someone’s beloved homeland. “However, when he stands among Orions, at least part of his heart is telling him that he, too, is Orion.”

“So we have to worry not only about what his mission was going into this situation,” the helmsman concluded, turning the _Shonagon_ back towards the stars, “but what it may become now that he’s here.”

* * *

The thing Chekov liked about the current plan they were executing was that his part in it was over relatively quickly and did not involve him dressing up in strange costumes, dying his skin, or having awkward conversations with members of the populace. Aside from these advantages, though, the scheme made him rather nervous.

They were finally going after the large haul of dilithium that Scotty had particularly desired. It might have been advisable to go after this treasure sooner, though. For the Orions seemed to be on alert now. Although there was no reason to believe they had any idea who was stealing from them, the thefts had been noticed. Security was getting progressively tighter at each location.

This robbery had to be performed in stages to get past the planetary shielding and then penetrate the security protecting the treasury itself. The plan called for Khwaja and Brecht to conduct commando-style coordinated assaults on power relay stations feeding the royal city with the _Shonagon_ on the ground to pick them up, while using the limited transporter capability to beam Chekov and Alleyn to the interior of a locked tower on the far edges of the palace grounds. From this location, the two of them would be able to set up equipment to defeat the treasury room security system and boost the _Shonagon’s_ transport signal.

Chekov didn’t like leaving their spacecraft grounded so long while the theft was taking place. He felt this left them too vulnerable to detection and attack from ground forces. However, in the planning session, his objections had been shouted down by the pirates.

When told that his tactical viewpoint was too conservative to make for a good thief, Chekov really couldn’t do anything other than agree whole-heartedly.

Now, though, as he stood with Jessie Alleyn in a dusty storage room with his heart pounding in his throat as he hurriedly keyed in instructions to the portable scanner they’d sat on top of a stack of crates, he wished he’d been more adamant in his objections.

“Ready, Peterson?” Alleyn asked, standing between two tripods topped with blinking blue lights.

The ensign cross-referenced readings from his portable scanner with a tricorder then sent them through the field dampener. Finally, he uplinked the appropriate locational readings to the signal booster. Taking out his communicator, he nodded to the madam. “Good luck, Ms. Alleyn.”

“Better skill than luck any day, sweetheart,” she advised, giving him a crooked grin as she took her place. “I’ve never had enough luck to pull us through a wet tissue.”

“Team two to _Shonagon_,” the navigator signaled the yacht. “Ready for beaming.”

“Copy that,” Sulu’s voice crackled in reply. “Stand by for transport.”

The navigator blew out a long breath as the _Shonagon’s_ transporter sparkled Alleyn to her next destination, relieved that his part in this job was almost done.

Mr. Scott had not been enthusiastic about Ms. Alleyn taking her turn at “playing the burgler” on this high stakes mission. However, she was determined to do so and did seem to wield a great deal of influence over the engineer.

It was also true that Moray Morgain, although skilled at theft, tended to take unnecessary chances to show off. A steadier, more cautious hand would probably be best for this job.

At any rate, Chekov decided, closing the top of his field dampener and stacking it on top of the scanner, he would be very glad to be back inside their base in the asteroid field with Mr. Scott at work on the dilithium Ms. Alleyn was probably at this moment replacing with carefully crafted fakes.

“Ready for equipment beam-up, _Shonagon_,” he reported into his communicator, stacking the tricorder on the top of the pile.

There was a pause before answer of “Stand by” came through.

Chekov frowned. It might just have been his imagination, but there was what might have been the sound of an energy weapon firing in the background of the call.

“Sulu?”

There was no answer from the yacht for another long pause of thirty or so seconds… and then the equipment in front of him sparkled away in the familiar glow of the _Shonagon’s_ transport beam.

The navigator shook his head. A thousand different reasons for such a delay ranging from trivial to completely disastrous immediately crowded into his mind. No point in speculating on them now…

“Ready for beaming,” he reported into the communicator.

There was another excruciating lacuna.

“Stand by, Team Two.”

This time, the sound of weapons discharge was unmistakable.

The navigator groaned in exasperation. “I told you so,” he complained loudly to the no one who was — once more — listening to him.

A distant creak of a floorboard alerted the Russian that this might not be the case. Heart racing, he felt for his disruptor… only to realize that it was with the equipment that had just beamed back to the _Shonagon_. 

He looked around. There were ample hiding places available among the crates and barrels in the storeroom, but this old wooden flooring would give his location away as soon as he moved.

“Hurry, Sulu, please!” he pleaded silently as he struggled to remove his boots, hoping that might help him move more quietly.

There were definitely now the sound of steps on a stairway. It seemed like there might be more than one individual.

One, he noted as he crouched down behind a row of boxes had gone to the floor above him. This seemed like a very good thing… until there was a strange… scraping sort of noise in the ceiling.

Just as he was looking up to investigate, a sharp pain struck him between the shoulders.

As the ensign’s vision suddenly blurred and dimmed at the edges, he reached back and discovered to his shock and amazement that he had been felled not by an energy weapon —as he had expected— but by a good old-fashioned feather-plumed dart.

* * *

Chekov woke to find he was having a most extraordinary dream. He had been abducted by giant frogs. They had green frog faces and sparkly gold frog eyes. They had shining bronze and gold stripes and white satin bellies.

“Who are you?” they demanded.

“Ensign Pavel Chekov,” he replied groggily. “Service number 656-5827D”

“Do you speak Orion?” the head frog asked shaking him.

The shaking didn’t help at all. His brain was considerably more jumbled now than it had even been before.

“Da,” he answered irritably in Russian, feeling nauseous. “Da, da!”

That sound coincidentally translated into a slang term for “Let’s go” in a dialect on one of the southernmost continents of this planet.

“You’re not going anywhere,” the frog-man informed him. “What house are you from?”

This was a very difficult question from this overly inquisitive frog. Although Chekov’s brain wasn’t working properly, he knew he couldn’t say he was from the Federation and the names of the pirate ship or Sulu’s borrowed yacht wouldn’t have any meaning.

“I am one of the Orlan Du,” he decided to reveal before going back to sleep.

* * *

Chekov roused to find his strange dream of being held captive by frogs was continuing. He was now being taken by the frog-guard to the Frog-King in a fantastical frog-palace.

His wrists and ankles were in chains that jangled loudly as the frog-guards jogged him along a glittering pathway that ran between decorative pools that lined the way to the Frog-King’s magnificent throne. His guards did not allow him to slow his pace. When he stumbled or slipped — which happened frequently since his boots seemed to have gone missing and the pink marble floor was quite slippery — they simply drug or carried him along.

There was an archaic term in Standard that the ensign dimly remembered — “frog march.” He distractedly wondered if this qualified.

The ensign was deposited on his knees at the foot of a small set of stairs leading up to the dais containing the very comfortable and colorful throne of the Frog-King — who on closer inspection was not a giant frog at all but rather a large, muscular Orion male wearing decorative bronze and gold body armor over a gorgeously embroidered white tunic.

Chekov could see where he had made the mistake, though, for behind this ruler was a forty foot high gold and bronze, dazzlingly bejeweled statue of a frog-headed god figure seated on a throne just as the real king was and surrounded by statues of servants and courtiers reclining on cushions in a manner that reflect the actual sovereign’s retinue.

“And what have we here?” the Frog-King asked in a rolling bass voice.

“Me?” the ensign squeaked. “Oh, no one.”

“You claim to be of the House Orlan Du.”

“The Orlan Du?” Chekov winced. “Did I say that?”

“Yes.”

“Ahh…” the ensign temporized, “If it is not too impertinent to inquire — Who are you? And where am I?”

These reasonable inquiries for some reason provoked a round of general laughter from the Frog-King’s retinue.

“Can you not see you are in the court of Budrin?” the Frog-King asked, gesturing to the walls of his palace.

“Budrin?” the Russian repeated blearily; the name did seem to echo with something from his research. “As in Budrin the Dreaded?”

“Ahh,” the Frog-King replied, “then you do know Dread Budrin?”

“Dread Budrin, Slayer of the Grachiq, Victor of Valic, Ruler the Five Lands, Favored of the God Nichak, Standard Bearer of the Five Hundred, Conqueror of the Outer Rim, Vanquisher of the Vayqir, Defeater of the Daq Sar, Subjugator of the Subcontinent of Namoz,” the ensign reeled off from memory. “No, not personally, of course, no…”

This answer also — for reasons unknown — elicited another round of hilarity from the Frog-King’s followers.

As the Russian’s vision began to clear a bit and the pastel fog receded somewhat from his sedative-clouded brain, he began to notice strong similarities between the features of the Frog-King sitting on the throne before him and images of the historical Orion ruler whose name had just been invoked.

The ensign frowned as he slowly came to the realization that the beings he was mistakenly thinking of as frogs were actually green-skinned Orions and that such a comparison to giant amphibians could be taken as highly derogatory.

He was in the midst of hoping that he hadn’t called anyone a frog aloud when he came to the full realization that he was in chains. Well, something was obviously amiss…

“There is a merchant of House Harstaq who wishes to register a claim on this one,” one of Budrin’s retainers was announcing while the ensign was trying to puzzle through this bizarre circumstance.

“Is there?” The ruler rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Let this merchant stand forward.”

"That's the one!" a familiar male voice exclaimed, entering through a portal to their left.

Chekov bit his lip, squeezed his eyes closed and willed this whole disaster to return to the dream he had originally mistaken it for as Khwaja hurried to his side making florid gestures of obeisance to the warlord and his court.

“A thousand pardons, Dread Lord!” the pirate groveled while trying unsuccessfully to insinuate himself between the navigator and his guards. “And accept our most humble gratitude for recovering our foolish little lost kitten!”

“Kitten?” Budrin rumbled. “Is that what he is?”

“Oh, what world of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?” Khwaja scolded, getting close enough to pull the ensign’s ear before he was warned back by the guards. "Yes, Great Lord,” the half-Orion said, turning back to the throne with overly dramatic gestures of deference. “Brigands stole him from us when they plundered one of our trading ships a month or two back. As you can see, he’s an exotic. Was expensive too. And you can see what they've done to him — filthy, overfed, and into all sorts of mischief according to your guards. I think they've tried to turn him into a third rate burglar after their stripe. We'll probably have to wipe his tiny brain and start over with his training entirely."

"That would be unfortunate,” the warlord observed, giving a broad smile that revealed his teeth that had been dyed a range of colors — as was the custom of that region. “I find him quite amusing..."

“He is good for an occasional laugh,” the pirate admitted.

“He has claimed he is of House Orlan Du”

“Those are the filthy beasts we pursue!” the pirate exclaimed without skipping a beat. “Oh, Dread Lord, let me caution you. This foolish little thing…” A hand tousled Chekov's hair, giving it a sharp, warning tug too. "He’s not very bright and is, unfortunately, a habitual liar. And since he thinks his life depends on telling you something 'interesting'... Well, there’s no limits on the sorts of fantastical tales he may spin."

"Hm." On a gesture from Budrin, Chekov was taken by the arm and jerked a couple of steps to one side - out of Khwaja's reach. "Oh, we have ways of focusing the minds of babbling servants."

“Of course, my Lord.” The pirate gave a deferential gesture before turning to the ensign. “Now, kitten, you must be truthful. Lord Budrin wants to know if you are a space pirate. Are you?”

Phrased thusly, this was a question Chekov could answer honestly with no difficulty. “No, sire. I am not.”

“Not at all. Are you?” Khwaja echoed approvingly. “I suppose that all that you do for them is the same service that you perform for me — serving me warm beverages, preparing my food, and cleaning the dining areas. Correct?”

Cheeks flaming at having to admit to the very menial role he still fulfilled in the team, the ensign nodded —forgetting entirely about the substantial amount of larceny he’d been a part of recently.

“Address your reply to the Dread Lord properly,” the pirate prompted.

“This is true, sire.”

“So you are not a pirate or a thief?” the Orion Warlord asked, his gold eyes narrowing.

“No, Lord Budrin.”

“But you _were_ abducted by pirates and thieves?”

This was another question the ensign was pleased to find that he could answer with absolute honesty. “Yes, sire.”

“And we thank you most humbly for his return…” Khwaja began.

“I have said nothing of returning him,” Budrin interrupted unsmilingly.

“Of course, we will offer an appropriate gratuity to express our sincere apologies for the trouble he has caused and our gratitude for…”

“As you say, he is an exotic.” Budrin rose from his dais and stepped down to have a closer look at the ensign. The warlord was tall and powerfully built. He towered over both the navigator and Khwaja. “Very exotic. I have nothing like him in my seraglio.”

“Ah, but he is so…” the pirate began.

Budrin silenced him with an abrupt gesture, then began to laugh. He clasped Chekov to himself. "And he amuses me. I see why you were angered by his theft. I will give you five thousand measures of tenilium for him." The Orion lifted the ensign’s chin with his large hand and gazed into his eyes. "To take your mind off your losses."

Chekov waited for Khwaja to remind Budrin of all the reasons why he didn't want to buy the ensign. Instead, the pirate smiled, gave a grand bow and said, "As you wish, my Lord."


	15. Chapter 15

“That will be quite enough of that, little fellow!” Budrin said as he wrestled the struggling ensign back into to the desired position on his lap.

Despite the curses and threats that Chekov had shouted after him in three different languages, Khwaja had sauntered away merrily on the heels of a courtier to receive his payment of tenilium without so much as a backwards glance.

Lord Budrin and his court had found the navigator’s distress to be yet another source of great amusement. The warlord threw back his large green head and laughed heartily as he stepped back up to his ornate throne and resumed his place. Shooing the nearest silk-clad courtesans aside, Budrin had signaled for his guards to seat his newest addition to his harem on his muscular thighs.

“Oh, how he squirms!” the warlord complained, although he was chuckling and grasping the ensign around the waist in a manner that seemed rather… personal.

“Let me go, you filthy…!”

Budrin took the navigator by the chin before he could complete the insult and rather roughly turned the Russian’s face in the direction of the pools that lined the pathway to the throne. “Can you swim little one?”

Looking at the moving shapes just below the surfaces of those not-just-decorative pools, a number of pieces of historical trivia about Lord Budrin suddenly coalesced inside Chekov’s brain. Unlike the majority of the potentates from whom they had purloined treasure, Budrin a’Hattal was not a dynastic ruler. He was a warlord who had ruthlessly swallowed up the territories of several of the petty kings around him. That was how he’d amassed such an exceptionally large horde of treasure.

Budrin’s patron god, Nichak, was usually represented in the form of a creature native to this region called a nichagana. This beast might look frog-like when the head was represented two-dimensionally and viewed frontally. However the creature itself was something closer to Earth’s crocodile.

History reported that Budrin kept tanks of nichagana in his palace both to honor his god and to dispose of those who were overly vocal in expressing dissenting viewpoints.

Chekov swallowed hard. History, apparently, was 100% correct about Lord Budrin’s preferences in décor.

“Yes, I can swim,” he replied, giving a weak laugh. “But that seems a little beside the point, doesn’t it?”

Budrin and his court again found this remark to be the very height of comedy.

Chekov felt he was beginning to catch on to the court’s sense of humor. It seemed that any time the warlord was laughing and _not_ tossing someone into the pools to be devoured was a good time to find something very funny.

“You _are_ an exotic.” The Orion stroked the ensign’s cheeks and lips with his thumb. “What sort of creature did the merchant say you were? A Kit-tan?”

“No, I’m a Human,” the ensign explained, silently damning Khwaja yet again.

“You were slave to the _Orrolan Du_?” the warlord asked, imitating Chekov’s over-articulated pronunciation.

The navigator tried to pull back from the Orion — who was now curiously stroking his hair — in a way that would not cause offense. “Not a slave, exactly.”

Far from being offended, the warlord simply moved on to unfastening the ensign’s tunic to better expose his chest to view. “Then exactly what were you to them?”

“I was abducted by pirates and held against my will.” It was difficult to decide on the best way to phrase his story… or avoid the Orion’s roving hands. “I have been held against my will for quite some time now.”

The warlord stroked the ensign’s cheeks once more. His multi-color smile was simultaneously tender and deadly. “You must tell me everything you know about the Orlan Du, little one,” Budrin commanded quietly.

Chekov’s mind went completely, desperately blank before supplying him with a single, luminously odd flash of inspiration. “I could perform a recitation,” he offered.

The warlord lifted a dubious eyebrow. “About the Orlan Du?”

“Yes.” The ensign’s heart began to thud in his throat. “You will need to unchain me.”

“Why?”

“There are gestures.”

“Gestures?”

“That accompany the recitation,” he explained.

Intrigued, the warlord lifted the navigator to his feet and waved a guard forward. “We will see this recitation.”

As the officer escorted the ensign down to a spot before the throne that would be appropriate for either a presentation — or as a launch point for being tossed to the nichaganas — Chekov breathed a silent apology to Jessie Alleyn for all the times he had scoffed at her convoluted robbery plans and hoped that she would be gracious enough not to laugh at this very silly plan of his… if by some miracle it happened to work….

“Uhm…” he stammered as the guard unlocked his chains. “I hope you will understand that….uhm…. in translation the rhyme and meter may… uhm… not be quite as…. effective as in the original…”

Budrin spread his hands in a gesture of magnanimity. “We shall take this into account.”

Chekov bowed his head and took a deep breath, trying to control the stage fright that gripped him. He consoled himself with the thought that reciting this poem for Dread Budrin and his court in front of two pools full of carnivorous alien beasts was marginally less frightening than the original performance he’d given for his family and his neighbor’s parent when he was nine.

He marked the location of the nearest exits, trying not to be too obvious in doing so.

“You delay?” the warlord asked, frowning.

“No, no,” the navigator assured his impatient audience. “I am simply… uhm… gathering the… uhm… proper mood for beginning…”

At Budrin’s signal, one of guards did something that caused the nichaganas to give a horrible roar.

“And there it is,” the ensign acknowledged, quickly assuming the dramatic first stance of the poem’s choreography, with his right arm extended and his left bent at an angle near his head.

_“Mighty and bold were their deeds_   
_Dark and fierce were their needs!”_

He reversed the pose with a stamp of his foot for the second couplet.

_“Terror they struck into the hearts of their foes_   
_Terror they spread as they come and they goes!”_

As he had warned them, the translation was going to play havoc with Kaminsky’s rhyme scheme…

_“Lust and blood were the wills guiding the ship,_   
_Misery and treasure from hearts they did rip!”_

Budrin’s court looked almost as taken aback by these lines as his mother and grandmother had in the original performance. The ensign thought this was perhaps because most of Orion’s performance tradition was devoted to dancing and wriggling about in a sensual manner rather than the martial delivery of good, full-throated pirate poems.

_“They killed the trader, they sacked the shops,_   
_They ruined temple and town—_   
_Like mighty scythes obliterating the crops_   
_The finest fruits they took down.”_

This verse and the next involved a lot of marching back and forth and miming cutting things up. At the last minute, Chekov remembered to modify his blocking so that it would read as phaser blasts instead of sword thrusts.

_“They plundered the village_   
_They raided the rich port_   
_troubled not by carnage_   
_It is their favorite sport.”_

The marching around that was called for in the blocking his neighbor had created for the poem for their performance so long ago was very helpful. It was moving him steadily closer to the curtained exit on the far left.

_“Pillaging vessels and robbing their tonnage_   
_is a most difficult way to earn a meal._   
_Why then do some choose to become so savage?_   
_They love nothing but to loot, hoard, and steal.”_

The plan he had come up with was one he had seen in a play. In it, under the cover of a song, an entire family had managed to flee in plain sight.

_“They wiped out all that they could find_   
_Of worth and strength and beauty,_   
_Under pitiless heels they did grind_   
_Any that barred the pursuit of rich booty. “_

The primary problem with the plan was that in the play, there had been several family members who had gradually made their surreptitious exits one by one. In this performance, he was on his own…

The next verse called for what his neighbor called “audience interaction.” Too overwhelmed to think up new movements to substitute for the actions called for, he climbed the steps and took a jeweled cup from the surprised grip of a courtier.

_“Those scavengers, mighty and evil,_   
_Will burst your ship into flames_   
_make a drinking cup from your skull,_   
_and loot your floating remains!”_

The courtier was shocked when the navigator threw the goblet to the nichaganas… but not as shocked as his grandmother had been when Chekov had thrown her champagne into the Deelings’ fireplace.

_“Nothing for this voyage can prepare your soul,_   
_Regret, grief, and guilt will soon take their toll.”_

Chekov was careful of his footing as he backed down the steps gesturing expansively to take in all of Budrin’s court. Falling over backwards at this point would have far worse consequences than it had in the many rehearsals in the Deelings’ house.

_“The pirate’s life is a very sad fate,_   
_You are beyond salvation, it is far too late.”_

He kept a warning finger pointed at the audience and checked the distance to the crucial exit once more.

_“Pirates, your golden age is long overdue,_   
_Justice will be served in the form of fierce cannon fire_   
_under dark skies of green and blue!”_

This was actually a section of the poem that was supposed to be delivered by his neighbor. The end of the prologue was approaching. The next section was a dialogue between the pirates and their captain… And Chekov was not at all good at improvising… So he added in some more marching and phaser fire miming again.

_“Men so bold, will fire at will._   
_No prisoners, just flames and death’s bone chill!”_

He was now directly in front of the curtain marking the exit he had picked out. Deciding he was running out of poem to execute the plan, he extended his arm, stamped one foot and declaimed,

_“They all knew the risks of this way of life,_   
_and this shall indeed be their final strife!”_

He then bowed with a flourish, turned, exited through the curtain… and ran for all he was worth.

The ensign reasoned as he pounded down the marbled corridor that the _Shonagon_ had to be in the vicinity still. Surely they were scanning for him. Since Budrin had not already killed him, either Jessie Alleyn had been able to abort her mission cleanly or the theft of the jewels had not yet been discovered. The computer’s replicas were so good that it could take weeks for this era’s experts to detect the fakes.

All the navigator had to do, he thought as he ran, was stay out of the grip of the Orions long enough for the _Shonagon’s_ sensors to distinguish his readings and…

Chekov’s breath was knocked out of him as he ran smack into a solid wall of guards that stepped out from behind a striped column.

When they dragged him back into the throne room, though, it was not to an unsmiling warlord, but to the cheers of an adoring audience.

“Again! Again!” Budrin was laughing and stamping his feet with glee. “This time you must throw away _my_ goblet. Understood?”

“Uh…yes…” Chekov straightened his clothing, tried to catch his breath and took a wary look at the swirling pools behind him. “If you wish.”

“We will all learn this wonderful recitation before I take you to my bedchamber,” the warlord promised.

Remembering Teacher Golton’s book and the eventual popularity this poem would have in Orion popular culture, the ensign sighed resignedly. “Of course you will.”

* * *

“Are you enjoying your bath?” Lord Budrin inquired solicitously as two servants helped him out of his armor.

“Oh, it’s… lovely,” Chekov replied with tight smile.

The ensign had resisted strenuously when the warlord’s servants had relieved him of his clothing and deposited him in the large and highly ornamented tub in Budrin’s bedchambers. The navigator’s lack of cooperation had only earned him several firm dunkings in the warm, lavender-tinted, soapy water and some vigorous scrubbing with spice-scented soaps that made him sneeze.

He was now left soaking in the deep end of the tub with his wrists once more bound in some very decorative handcuffs that were hooked to a large ring over his head that dangled — a bit ominously — from the mouth of yet another dazzlingly jeweled representation of Budrin’s patron god’s head.

“Better than the alternative,” the warlord pointed out jovially as his servants knelt to unlace his sandals.

Like Budrin’s audience chamber, the warlord’s huge bedroom was filled with gigantic representations of Nichak and nichagana. For reasons that at this moment the Russian could not possibly fathom, the Orion apparently found that sort of imagery erotic.

“I am bearing that in mind,” the ensign assured him, nervously scanning the murky bubbling purple waters of the bath for toad-headed carnivorous creatures that his over-stimulated imagination kept warning him might be lurking there.

“I will join you soon,” Budrin promised as his servants removed his embroidered tunic and held up a colorful full-length robe for him to change into.

The ensign sought a safe place on the ceiling to direct his gaze. “Do not hurry on my account.”

The warlord laughed as he dismissed his servants with a wave. He did not seem at all hurried as he came and sat on a padded footstool near the end of the tub where Chekov had been stationed.

“Your recitation was most impressive,” he complimented the ensign as he began to remove his many rings and bracelets.

The navigator laughed nervously and edged as far away as the decorative — but very functional — handcuffs would allow. “Thank you.”

“I would like to hear another speech from you,” the warlord requested placing a small fortune’s worth of rings from his large right hand into a jewel box on a small marble table next to the tub that had stylized representations of nichagana for its legs.

“I have a rather limited repertoire,” the ensign replied apologetically, wondering how well a bit of Pushkin might go over under the circumstances.

“You’ve already performed this particular recitation for me once before.” Budrin used the mirror inside the mouth of the Nichak’s head that stood at the back of the table to watch himself remove the large gold rings dangling from his left ear. “I merely want an encore.”

Chekov blinked. “Oh?”

“Yes.” Budrin turned and leaned with his large forearms resting on the side of the tub. “Recite my titles for me.”

“Oh… uhm…” The ensign managed to ease himself a bit further towards the opposite edge of the bath. “Dread Budrin, Slayer of the Grachiq, Victor of Valic, Ruler of the Five Lands, Favored of the God Nichak, Standard Bearer of the Five Hundred, Conqueror of the Outer Rim, Vanquisher of the Vayqir, Defeater of the Daq Sar, Subjugator of the Subcontinent of Namoz.”

“Yes.” The Orion knit his brow as he smiled a puzzled version of his rather unpleasant multi-hued smile. “There are two of those that I haven’t done… yet.”

“Oh?” Chekov winced. That was the problem with time travel — It was difficult to keep up with _when_ you were. He gave another nervous laugh. “Well, you are a very capable person. I am sure you will get around to it.”

“You are?” The warlord reached up and casually used the chain linking the ensign’s wrists together to pull him closer. “From whence does your confidence in me arise?”

“Uhm.. You obviously know how to take advantage of opportunities,” the navigator blurted out.

“Mmm.” Budrin brushed a wet strand of Chekov’s very non-Orion hair back from his forehead. “Do the Orlan Du wish to offer me such an opportunity?”

“Ah…” The ensign’s mind raced. This finally might be an opening to bargain for his freedom. “That is a matter you should discuss with them. Offering to return me to them would be a way to open such discussions…”

Budrin chuckled as if he were not taken in by this gambit. “Oh, I am sure there are many ways to start such conversations if I so choose…”

They were interrupted at that moment by the sounding of a soft series of chimes.

The warlord’s face immediately folded into a ‘this had better be good’ frown. “Yes?” he snapped at the unseen source of this interruption.

“Lord,” a servant called quietly from behind a row of curtains. “You wished to be notified if there were further emissaries from House Harstaq…”

Budrin gathered his robe around him. “Yes.”

“This one claims that he is truly from that House and the other that we have entertained was an impostor.”

“Send him in at once.” The warlord grinned and pinched the Russian on the cheek. “I think your Orlan Du have returned for you, little one.”

Chekov thought so too but was not at all pleased. How stupid did Khwaja think Budrin was? He was going to get both of them fed to the crocodiles… Why couldn’t they have used the transporter instead? Or at the very least picked a time when he was wearing some clothes?

The person who entered the royal bedchamber was not Khwaja. It was a short, stocky, unimpressive sort of Orion, wearing dull, shabby garments.

“So, you’re going to claim this one belongs to you?” Budrin put his hands on his hips, also seemingly disappointed that Khwaja had not stupidly blundered back in to try to lie and bluster the warlord out of his captive.

“We understand that you paid the Orlan Du an incredible price that we have no hopes of matching…” the Orion said so humbly and mournfully that it took a full minute for Chekov’s brain to drop into gear and tell him that this was Stuart Brecht in disguise with his head shaved and his skin dyed an olive green.

“Because they raided you, yes,” the warlord interrupted with an unsympathetic sneer. “And yet you were able to follow them here?”

“Actually, following the line of their thefts, we _anticipated_ their arrival here, sire,” Brecht corrected meekly, rubbing his bald head with one hand as if he were afraid it was about to get smacked. “However not as cleverly as we hoped.”

The frown on Budrin’s face tended to indicate that he was contemplating doing much more than striking this irritant. “And now you have nothing to show for it?”

“No, sadly…” Brecht said, nervously glancing down and something he was clutching in his other hand.

Chekov thought he saw a bit of a glow of neon light escape from between the freebooter’s fingers.

Budrin must have caught it too. “What is that?”

“Oh, this?” Brecht almost absently opened his palm to reveal the curiously fashioned bits of kirolite. “Four shards of a medallion sire. We think it contains a map to the place where they store their ill-gotten fortune; however, we’ve been unable to decipher it.”

When the freebooter lined the shards up into their proper orientation and pushed them together, the four pieces gave off a weird pink glow. The glow was weird because it was strange, eerie, and accompanied by an odd hum… but also because Chekov knew it was the wrong color and that the shards didn’t work that way.

Budrin, who knew none of these things, was clearly entranced. “If it’s their treasure map,” he reasoned, “surely they will be desperate to have it back.”

“That was our hope.” Brecht sadly pushed the shards apart, extinguishing their glow. “We intended to use it to barter back some of our goods — particularly the exotic…” The freebooter jerked his thumb towards Chekov in the tub as if taking serious note of him for the first time. “who we had a buyer for on Cordolon — but now…”

“Well…” Budrin held out his hand for the shards. “Perhaps your buyer on Cordolon need not be disappointed…”

* * *

“It was five thousand in _tenilium_,” Khwaja protested, leaning back in his seat behind the pilot’s position on the _Shonagon_. “Kitten, you aren’t worth five thousand in _morzolite_. I wouldn’t pay _ten_ for you in tenilium. And that’s not ten _thousand_. That’s _ten_.”

Although Chekov was still dressed in the short, white, embroidered tunic that Budrin’s servants had provided for him instead of returning his clothing, he was manning his station as the yacht’s navigator. As was necessary when the full team was aboard, they had retracted the wall between the _Shonagon’s_ cockpit and sleeping compartment to convert the full cabin into a seating area that could accommodate everyone. This left little privacy for getting changed back into normal clothing. Also the ensign was anxious to put as much space between himself and the warlord as possible as quickly as was feasible. This had not, however, prevented him from expressing his displeasure with his teammates’ actions at some length.

“I would pay ten for him,” Stuart Brecht volunteered, calling over his shoulder from the back of the cabin where he and Jessie Alleyn were sorting their plunder into different cargo crates. “If I had ten… But then again, I have seen him in the bath.”

Chekov closed his eyes. This was not, nor, he knew, would it be the last instance of this sort of teasing. “Mr. Brecht…,” he began firmly, nonetheless.

“All right,” Khwaja interrupted, completely ignoring him in favor of continuing with his theoretical. “If I had ten, let’s say I would pay ten. But five thousand is…” The Orion spread his hands and searched the cabin for an apt equivalent. “We could buy this ship for one hundred.”

Sulu snorted disbelievingly. “More like a thousand… Maybe not even five thousand.”

“No, not literally _this_ ship,” the pirate amended. “One hundred is pretending it’s the merchant vessel we said it was.”

“And we’d said we’d been stripped to the bones by pirates so how are we going to turn down five thousand in tenilium?” Brecht asked, bringing a jeweled crown, a toolbox, and two medium-sized cases with him back to the front of the ship.

“Perhaps the entire situation could have been avoided by coming up with a different plan…” the ensign began only to be drowned out by a chorus of groans — since this was not the first time he had brought up the fact that he had been against this ill-starred scheme from its inception.

“Aaargh!” Khwaja exclaimed clasping his hands to his ears and turning to Sulu. “Is he always like this?”

“When he’s right about something.” The helmsman nodded. “Yes. And when not following his advice ends up in some locals taking some potshots at us and knocking the transporter out for three critical minutes that _almost_ gets Jessie captured and _does _get him captured. And when we do get the transporter up again we can’t get a lock on him because there are Orions right next to him for the next several hours during which he almost gets fed to these crocodile-type things… Yeah, he gets a little cranky.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sulu.” Chekov gave a satisfied nod to his helm-partner for this statement of support.

“When we voted on this plan,” Jessie Alleyn reminded the pilot as she extracted some pink stones from the base of scepter, “you didn’t vote with him either, luv.”

“You could have gone _all _day without saying that,” Sulu muttered, finding a course adjustment that needed his urgent attention.

“I cannot believe you gave Budrin four shards of the medallion,” Chekov said, turning to Brecht.

“You’re welcome, Admiral,” the freebooter replied defensively, looking up from the crown he was systematically stripping of its dilithium studwork. “And they were fake. Just a sweet little lightshow to turn his attention from your sweet little…”

“_Three_ of them were fake,” Khwaja corrected.

“We don’t need the real ones anymore,” Brecht countered with a shrug. “Now that we know what the treasure pod is and how to operate it, we always use the _Shonagon’s_ computers to open it, don’t we?”

“You took the liberty of giving out the other two real shards to spies from other of the Great Houses who we knew were present in Budrin’s court.” The half-Orion’s statement of fact had the tone of accusation about it.

“Well, since our little troubadour has let the cat out of the bag about the existence of the mythical Orlan Du, our last robbery is going to be rather tricky,” the freebooter explained, popping a dilithium stone the size of a goose-egg out of the center of the setting. “I figured we could use the cover of a little extra chaos.”

“Enough chaos to set off the War between the Five Houses?” the pirate asked sharply.

“Khwaja…” Brecht put aside the crown he was ruining and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Dear fellow,” he began in the common trade tongue of contemporary Orions as if he was actually the sort of common merchant he was still disguised as. “You’re walking among these people. You can see the social, cultural, and economic factors that are lining up. An apex predator like Budrin is merely looking for an excuse…”

The pirate rejected this attempted a comradery with a sneer. “Like the one we just handed him?”

As the silence between the two grew thick, Chekov decided it was as good a time as any to admit, “I may have inadvertently revealed information to Budrin about his part in the wars.”

“You did?” Brecht blinked incredulously. “Mr. We-Can’t-Change-The-Timeline? How?”

“I addressed him by what I assumed was his proper full title.”

“From the end of his career,” Khwaja surmised immediately, throwing up his hands exasperatedly. “Not the beginning.”

The navigator nodded. “He was most eager for collaboration with the Orlan Du against the other Houses.”

“He may not need an actual Orlan Du to achieve the kind of disruption he needs to start throwing his weight around,” Brecht pointed out. “Just the rumor of us should be sufficient…”

“Launching aggressive strikes into his neighbor’s territories under the cover of searching for us, searching for our treasure, searching for the real shards after Brecht’s fake glow stones burn out…” Khwaja lifted an impressed eyebrow as he considered the myriad possibilities for military mayhem. “Congratulations, Kitten, your face is on the verge of launching a thousand starships… Well, some part of your body, that is…”

“Do not attempt to blame all this on me,” the navigator rebutted firmly.

“I don’t know what you’re mewling about.” The pirate gave an exaggerated yawn. “Budrin a’Hattal is Orion’s equivalent of Alexander the Great. All you have to do now is make it home and write your memoirs — “How My Innocence Was Conquered by the Great Orion Conqueror” or something to that effect. I know I’d buy a copy.” Khwaja turned to Sulu with a leering grin. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I am _so_ not in this conversation; I couldn’t even see it from orbit,” the helmsman replied, keeping his eyes safely on his instruments.

“That is not what happened,” the Russian insisted hotly.

“Well, it’s how you’re remembered in Orion history,” the pirate rebutted. “Maybe it’s why I find you so irresistible, kitten. I’ve grown up reading erotica based on speculations based on your misadventure with Dread Budrin… Well, actually, on naughty indiscretions by _both_ of you. Two different Humans.” Khwaja included the helmsman in his gesture. “Wonder how that’s going to come about?”

Jessie Alleyn snapped her fingers. “This gives me a great idea…”

The helm team turned to her in unison. “No!”

“Oh, no, you’re on coffee and scones duty ‘til further notice after this disaster, luv,” she assured the tunic-clad navigator, then turned to the helmsman. “But you…”

Sulu waved her off warily. “No, I’m the pilot.”

“Think about it, sweetheart,” the madam began reasonably. “Peterson’s a disaster. Moray would go psycho if anyone touched her. And the rest of us are too old or too Orion to make this work...”

Brecht tilted his head in her direction. “Make what work, exactly?”

“Our problem with getting those jewels on Cordolon is that the treasury is right below the royal residence — making security a royal bitch,” Alleyn explained, then pointed to Sulu. “But if we sell that one to Seq Donalev as an exotic…”

The helmsman waved his hands in a negation. “No, no, no…”

“Hear me out,” the madam requested. “We’ll have a really beautiful collar and cuffs on you that they can’t remove…”

“But I can?” Sulu asked, starting to see the logic of the scheme despite himself.

“Exactly. That’s where your toolkit and communicator will be stored…”

“Cheznee…” Khwaja began but finding himself at a loss to articulate his objection, looked to Brecht for support.

Chekov closed his eyes wearily. This is how their planning sessions for these robberies always began. The most outrageous ideas that one initially assumed would be discarded early in the process always seemed to be the ones that ended up being adopted and executed.

“Jessie, my dear…” Stuart Brecht shook his head. “The only thing we’ve got going for us is that the Ancient Orions haven’t seen all the cheesy holovids you steal your ideas from.”

“Well, then,” Alleyn decided practically as she plucked a large dilithium rock from the head of her scepter. “Unless my Aunt Fanny’s holo-comp suddenly pops through a time-hole after us, I think we’re going to be all right.”


	16. Chapter 16

“I don’t think Pops is all that mad at you.”

Chekov sighed. If it had been a disciplinary assignment, he didn’t suppose that being asked to sit nearly up to one’s waist in jewels sorting through gemstones would be considered all that onerous by many individuals.

However both he and Moray Morgain were chafing a bit at being stuck at the asteroid base while their comrades were at this moment engaging in the last of the robberies of the Great Houses. The ensign had been tasked with searching out and extracting some additional stones from the pieces that had already been consigned to the treasure storage pod. Morgain was drinking coffee and eating scones in the control room of the bay, waiting to seal the pod and send it back out into space when the ensign had finished his treasure hunt.

“This has nothing to with Mr. Scott being upset with me.” Chekov had noticed that although Morgain gave no acknowledgement of the possibility that Scott and Alleyn might be her parents while in their presence, when she was alone with the ensign, she had fallen into the habit of referring to the couple in quite familiar terms. “Pops” and “the old lady” were frequent choices.

“Oh, you’re mad at yourself because you Three-Witched that guy and touched off the big Orion war…”

Chekov blinked at the speaker on the pod lid above his head. “I did what?”

Morgain’s voice was coming through the last vestiges of the communication system that had been stripped from the pod. There was actually no way to get a message out through the pod. She was hearing him via the bay’s com system. It tended to make for some strange conversations… And it sounded like this conversation was going to be an odd one purely on a content level even without transmission difficulties…

“Oh, you know…” Morgain changed her voice to the sort of melodramatic screech appropriate to matinee sorceresses as it crackled through the speakers, “All hail, Macbeth! All hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! All hail, Macbeth! Thou shalt be king thereafter!”

The Russian squinted up at the window to the control room that was in the middle of the south wall of the bay. “Who are you talking about?” he asked loudly so that the com would pick his voice up.

“You know,” the pirate insisted. “The Scottish play.”

“Oh.” The Russian shrugged. “Scottish things again.”

“Well, this is pretty famous Scottish thing,” Morgain retorted. “Not to you, apparently... But there’s this guy coming home from a war. He meets these three witches who tell him he’s going to get this big promotion and then he’s going to be king. They disappear. And right away he gets word that he got the big promotion so then he goes ape-shit crazy and starts killing people to make the prediction that he’s going to be king come true — which it does — but eventually people kill him because nobody’s into that ape-shit murder stuff.”

“That does seem to have some interesting parallels to the situation with Budrin,” the ensign admitted as he used a tool to pry a small lavender stone from a diadem.

“Well, we ain’t Pushkin, but we try.”

The ensign sighed unhappily as he looked about him at the trove of priceless treasures that he had helped steal and was helping to ruin. “I am simply uncomfortable with the feeling that I am trapped playing a part I do not wish in an inevitable pattern of events I cannot control…”

“Merely a player strutting and fretting his hour on the stage, eh?” the pirate asked sympathetically.

“Is this more from that Scottish play?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He nodded appreciatively. “It does sound a bit like Pushkin…”

There was an unidentifiable sound over the speaker — perhaps Morgain pushed her chair backwards abruptly…

“Oh hell...” the pirate muttered. “Here we go…”

There was something peculiar in her voice. “What is it?” he called warily, freezing with the diadem still in one hand and the purple stone in the other.

Abruptly, the lid of the pod came wheezing down on him. It closed with a pneumatic deliberateness. If he had been given enough warning, he probably could have scrambled out. However from a seated position, covered in bejeweled debris, all he could do was reach for the sides of the pod and call out in outrage, “Miss Morgain! What do you think you are doing?”

“Just keep quiet and take shallow breaths for a little bit, Angel,” the pirate advised him through the internal speakers.

He cursed, first in Russian, and then in a few languages that he knew she could have understood if there was a microphone setup on his end to pick up what he was saying as the pod slowly upended and slid into its slot in wall grid. From the matching groans and squeals of machinery, it sounded like for some unknown reason Morgain was lowering a different pod into place in the bay.

Jewels tumbled from all directions in the pitch black, making for a most uncomfortable landing as he and all the other contents of the interior settled onto the bottom of the pod.

He was in the process of locating a wall to beat a fist against to register his protest at this prank when the sound of a most unwelcome voice over the speaker stopped him cold.

“I’m taking the _Nell_, Moray. Are you with me?”

Morgain gave a cynical laugh before answering her former captain. “You make it sound like I have a choice.”

“I’m making it sound like I don’t know where you stand,” Goudchaux replied coldly.

Chekov could hear the click of Morgain’s high-heeled boots before she laughed again and answered, “I’m standing right over here.”

More boot-steps as the pirate captain joined her. “What’s all this, then? Escape pods?”

“It’s what they use to store the treasure.”

“Is it? Well, I’ll be dam…”

There was the unmistakable sound of a struggle, then the sound of a woman gasping… a strange, deep, pained outrush of air… the thud of someone hitting the floor… then silence.

“Turns out you were right about men, Moray,” Goudchaux observed, his voice as icy as the grave.

* * *

Chekov had no way of reckoning time inside the pitch black treasure pod. He heard the sounds of the pirates stealing the wrong escape pod and figured that they had left the station.

What seemed like hours passed. Although Moray Morgain had treated him badly… and part of him was still angry with her for the many indignities she had heaped upon him… and she was a pirate and a thief… and he disapproved of many things about her… he knew she was dead, and he wept for her. 

He feared that since no one came to release him that indicated that Scott was dead as well and that the oxygen in the pod would run out before the _Shonagon_ returned to the station… or that perhaps the _Nell_ would catch the little yacht by surprise and none of them would be left.

He had lain down amongst the jewels and was dozing lightly when the roar and whine of the motors of the armature that carried the pod through the bay jolted him to sudden wakefulness.

His heart raced as the pod began its maddeningly slow descent to the bay floor. He held an arm up to his face to shield himself from the fall of sharp-edged jewels. However he could not shield his mind from the onslaught of possibilities that it filled itself with. Each was more dreadful than the last.

Even the dim illumination of the bay was painful to his light-starved eyes as the coffin-like lid of the pod finally wheezed open.

No one was present to greet him.

He half-stumbled, half-ran to the bay’s control room as fast as his be-numbed legs would carry him.

Brecht, Scott, and Alleyn were arranged in a tableau around Morgain’s body almost like an old religious painting. Brecht sat on the floor with Moray’s head cradled in his lap, her pale body turned so that Goudchaux’s knife was visible sticking below the bottom of her ribcage on her right side. Scott sat behind Brecht at the bay’s control panel. The engineer had been operating the controls to free Chekov and now turned back to put an arm around Jessie Alleyn who knelt beside him with one hand on his knee for support.

“Where’s Sulu?” Chekov asked, his heart standing still.

Brecht looked up. “Goudchaux has him.”

“Is he…?”

“Alive?” It was almost as if it hurt the freebooter to say the word while he held the body of this young woman who had been his lover. “Yes. Last time we saw him. Khwaja is gone too. He went with Goudchaux.”

Scott gestured towards Morgain with his free hand. “What happened here, lad?” he asked quietly.

The ensign took in a deep, not very steady breath. “I am not entirely certain. She seemed to hear something or see something on the monitors and then locked me inside the treasure pod and placed another out into the bay as a decoy.”

Scott nodded. “She locked the door on my workroom at the same time. Chen couldn’t get in at me, but I couldn’t get out either.”

“Goudchaux informed her that he was taking the _Nell_ and asked if she was with him,” the ensign said, continuing his report, unable to keep his eyes from the knife and the wide pool of blood surrounding it. “Her answer was ambiguous. She directed his attention out to the bay. They struggled and this was the result.”

“What the hell was she doing?” Jessie Alleyn asked. Small tears rolled down her hard face unnoticed as if the woman had never learned how to cry and didn’t quite know how to do it properly.

“It is possible,” Chekov said slowly, feeling it was necessary to get this potentiality stated and out of the way — and that he might as well be the one to do it since he was never listened to anyway, “that she was in league with her former colleagues and was ultimately betrayed by them.”

“Or,” Brecht suggested, stroking her hair, “she could have thought that because she knew them better than she thought you two did, she could take them all on by herself if no one was in her way.”

The ensign had to admit that this alternative interpretation was also in keeping with the events as they had transpired and Morgain’s brash character.

“She was a show-off.” Alleyn gave the metal plate over her daughter’s eye a reproving tap. “I kept telling her it was going to get her killed.”

“Lad,” Scott asked. “Do you have any reason to think she knew Goudchaux was planning an escape?”

The ensign shook his head. “She didn’t act as though anything out of the ordinary was about to happen. She was telling me about a Scottish play — one in which a warrior is visited by three witches who predict that he will become some sort of military leader and then king…”

Brecht gave a half-choked laugh.

“Not_ a_ Scottish play, Admiral,” he corrected, wiping his suddenly overflowing eyes. “_The_ Scottish play.” Tenderly stroking the cold cheek of the young woman before him, he quoted, “She should have died hereafter. There would have been time for such a word…”

When the freebooter could not continue, Scott took up the citation, pressing Jessie Alleyn close to his side,

> _“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,_
> 
> _Creeps in this petty pace from day to day_
> 
> _To the last syllable of recorded time,_
> 
> _And all our yesterdays have lighted fools_
> 
> _The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!_
> 
> _Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player_
> 
> _That struts and frets his hour upon the stage_
> 
> _And then is heard no more.”_

After a long, silent moment of pale benediction almost unbearably steeped in remorse, Brecht drew in a deep breath. “Goudchaux will go after the time machine now. That’s why he grabbed your friend Sulu.”

“Where is it?” Scott asked, putting voice to part of the question that immediately occurred to Chekov — Where could the time machine be that would require a pilot like Sulu to get to it?

“Not here. Not now,” the freebooter answered intriguingly. “It was stolen by some teenagers in our time from a top secret facility near Aberdeen.”

The engineer’s eyes narrowed as if this were an accusation. “Was it now?”

Brecht smiled a bleached shadow of his usual cock-sure grin. “Well, you should remember, Mr. Scott, since you were one of the three kids who stole it.”

“We never stole from a…”

“Oh, he means the old Cammell Laird plant,” Alleyn prompted. “It had another name, too. It was supposed to be something. We were in and out of there quite a few times. Do you remember? When we broke in for that Russian fellow…”

The moment that Alleyn’s puzzled gaze settled on the ensign, Chekov’s body decided that it had borne enough stress for the day… and perhaps even for this lifetime. His knees buckled beneath him. He staggered backwards and slid down the wall behind him.

_“Bozhe Moi_,” he gasped as the universe reeled around him. “Chen recognized me. He recognized me from his past...”

“No, no, that’s not right,” Mr. Scott was saying in a very reasonable tone of voice. “That fellow was… That Russian fellow… He was a grown man.”

“You were fifteen,” Brecht reminded him.

“I’d had a bit that night too,” the engineer remembered. “A bit much…”

“Chen asked if I looked like my father.” Chekov pressed his hands against his temples to keep his poor head from exploding. “He had Esme send me to Quondar because he wanted to see if you would recognize me, Ms. Alleyn…”

Alleyn shook her head. “All men in that place looked alike to me, Peterson.”

“We have to get that time machine,” Brecht said. “We have to keep it out of Goudchaux’s hands.”

Chekov looked up. “Sulu will never agree to help him.”

“Normally, no,” the freebooter agreed. “But he’s very fond of you, Admiral, and he doesn’t know that Goudchaux doesn’t have you. And Bardon Goudchaux _does_ have lots of footage of you under Mr. Chen’s not-so-gentle care. How many hours of your screams will your friend be able to listen to before he starts to compromise?”

The Russian opened his mouth to give a stout defense of the helmsman’s loyalty to Starfleet and its principles above all merely personal concerns, but then thought of how cruelly he’d been manipulated by fears for Mr. Scott’s safety. The ties of friendship between him and Sulu were much stronger. The potential for this bond to be used to compromise the helmsman could not be ignored.

“What about Khwaja?” Scott asked into the awkward silence.

“I honestly don’t know.” Brecht shook his head. “At this moment, I am uncertain where his loyalties lie. I do know he has knowledge that can hurt us badly. But then again, we all know that.”

Chekov’s brain ached from all the thoughts trying to sort themselves out at once. Foremost in his mind at the moment was the fact that both Brecht and Goudchaux (perhaps via Khwaja?) seemed to know about the “slingshot around a sun” method of time travel. Brecht seemed to think that if Goudchaux had Sulu to handle the piloting, he had someone (perhaps Khwaja?) who could handle the procedures for setting up the computations necessary.

The slingshot method of time travel put great stress on the structural integrity of the vessel that attempted it and could not be executed repeatedly without inflicting great damage. The time machine, however, seemed to have been designed for aiding vessels in chronemic travel. If installed and deployed properly, it was logical to assume that it might be used for many such voyages without undue damage to the ship.

The first time the pirate captain had used the time machine not knowing what it was, he had sent them all three thousand years into the past and nearly killed himself. Knowing what it was and how to use it, what sort of mayhem would he cause? What sort of personal vengeance would he wreak? Would he sell it to the highest bidder? A time machine in the hands of the Klingons or even the Orions would be a galactic disaster of an unthinkable order….

Scott was giving the freebooter a narrow look. “Isn’t it about time you explained exactly who you really are, Mr. Brecht?”

Brecht shrugged. “We can waste time on that if you want. Here’s something I can tell you that I know you’ll believe, though.” He pointed at the knife in Moray Morgain’s ribs. “This is who Bardon Goudchaux is. This is what he’s capable of to get what he wants. He has Lt. Sulu. He has Khwaja. He’s going to try to get a time machine that will make him capable of erasing the populations of whole planets and making sure that none of us were ever born.”


	17. Chapter 17

The place reminded him of Archangel. The arctic wind, blasting in directly off the North Sea, snapped lumps of ice off the low eaves of the roof and blew them into the shadows beneath. The flitter park was deserted. The few remaining vehicles were clamped down, to stop the storm tipping them over. Down one side of the asphalted field a high fence, topped with razor wire and laser beams, marked the boundary of the Cammell Laird yard. It was only midafternoon and already the sky was pitch black. Chekov rolled down his sleeves and pushed his hands inside the capacious cuffs of his tunic. His clothes were dark: anonymous garments that jibed with Scott and Alleyn’s faded memories, dark goggles to hide his eyes, hair brushed back to make him appear more “grown up”. Nothing was designed to cope with the Scottish winter. He was wearing two sets of everything.

He picked out a shadowy indent in the long wall of the warehouse and sank as far back into the corner as he could go while still maintaining a view of the gates.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d need to wait at this habitual meeting place for the four pirates-to-be. It was doubtful that Esme would make an appearance on this occasion. According to everyone’s best recollection, she hadn't been a member of the contingent who'd broken into Cammell's to steal the capsule. The ensign idly wondered how she was going to wind up with the fifth shard. It was burning a hole in Chekov's pocket now. His other side was weighted with a bag containing two kilos of Illyssium, cut with calcium carbonate and a little aspirin, the way it was sold back then, around the time that his father and mother had first dated.

'If it seems right, let one of them have it.' Brecht’s eyes had looked haunted as he mulled over their strategy concerning the troublesome fifth shard aboard the _Shonagon_ after their successful “slingshot” back to this time period. 'That's the only advice I can give you.'

A shadow darted across the white wall of the deserted kiosk by the gate, followed by another, and a third. Chekov waited for a fourth, since Brecht had said four children had vanished, but there was no sign of another.

He heard soft, unbroken voices as they made their way along the wall toward him. When he judged them close enough, he stepped out of the darkness and into the shadow. "Scott..."

Immediately there was a boy, nearly as tall as himself, with cropped hair, holding a knife to his throat. The teenager's companions, slighter and quicker, stood back to give the attacker room. Chekov didn't move. "I heard that I could do business with you," he said, trying desperately not to sound like a bad thriller vid.

"Yes?" The knife wielder moved fractionally, turning his face up so that Chekov could see, at least, that this wasn't Chen.

Chekov let an Andorian phaser slide out of his sleeve. "Please, put the knife away."

The children obviously had better night vision than he. They realized what he was holding and froze. The boy who would become Chief Engineer of the _Enterprise _slowly slid his weapon back into his belt.

Chekov recognized that none of them doubted he would use the phaser. He gestured them into the cranny where he'd been sheltering, making it difficult for any of them to try and run for it. Out of the meagre shelter, the wind cut through his clothing with renewed ferocity. He moved a little, so that when they looked at him, he could see their faces as more than paler shadows.

Scott was thin-faced, serious. Chekov wouldn't have remarked on the resemblance to his now colleague if he hadn't been looking for it. Chen was slight, but already had the thick neck that would remain with him when he grew another twenty centimeters and made some muscle. Moray Morgain was so blonde, she was almost translucent, like an icicle. Then Chekov realized his mistake. This wasn't Moray, but Alleyn. Her hazel eyes were washed out to grey in the dirty light that filtered through the glass eaves. She looked twelve going on thirty, while Scott seemed to be about fourteen. Chen might have been anything from ten to seventeen, Chekov guessed. They were all pinched with cold.

"What kind of business?" Alleyn asked. She raised an eyebrow when Chekov looked surprised. "I'm the brains of the outfit," she said firmly. "These are my bodyguards. The muscle. Don't try anything."

Chekov was almost tempted to laugh. The boys were as scrawny as chickens.

"Jessie..." Scott said softly, irritably. "Dinnae..."

"Let me handle this!" she hissed. She turned back to Chekov. "Don't pay him any mind. He's new to this game, but he'll play along."

The girl didn't have any kind of accent beyond the flat twang of a child who'd spent too long watching vids. Chekov was quite glad she'd appointed herself spokesman of the group. He felt awkward enough without having to ask for repeated clarification from Scott.

Chekov kept his eyes steadily on them, aware — Brecht had drummed this into him — that they might as easily steal the drugs and the shard as trade for them.

There was a glass-fronted alarm just above the children's heads. Smashing it would bring police, maybe even security personnel from elsewhere on the site. The children would be caught, questioned, supervised.

The Federation would never happen, and these three would probably never be born. Or end up in thrall to the Orions.

He just hadn't expected them to be so young.

"There is something in there..." The ensign nodded at the fence of corrugated steel panels. "...that I need. I'm willing to pay..."

"You got credits or goods?" Chen asked. "We not deal in credits."

"Goods." Chekov swallowed. "Drugs."

"Give us." The boy pushed forward, confident, eager. He too sounded like a citizen of the galaxy, quite unlike Scott.

"First I need to know if you can get what I need..."

"We know _everything_ that goes on in there," Alleyn said firmly. She looked at Scott. "Don't we?"

Scott nodded. "Yes. They're testing shields for..."

"Shut up. He has to pay if he wants to know what happens in there. Don't give anything away. What drugs?"

"I _am_ interested in shields, specifically shielding for space ships,” the ensign said as he had been instructed by Brecht. He held out an old-fashioned paper diagram of the time-travel device with all its identifying marks carefully recorded. “However I am specifically interested in your retrieving one specific experimental device for me. Do you know anything about the area where classified research is being carried out in there?"

"We don't answer _anything_ until we see the goods."

The navigator refolded his diagram and pulled out the smaller of the two bags of Illyssium and held it out to Chen.

"This it?" Chen demanded. Chekov wondered when the boy had decided to become the huge, silent type.

"There's more."

The plastic fastener on the bag was unclipped, spinning away into the darkness. Chen dipped a finger in and tasted it. "Illyssium." He turned to his companions. "Blue lace."

"Yes," Chekov confirmed.

"Tastes right, but..."

"But what?"

"We gotta test it."

"I assure you, it's genuine. Or is there a forensic analyst somewhere near?"

"We not gonna take your word for anything," Chen insisted. "Monty, you try it."

Scott's eyes opened wide. "Why me?"

"You never took it before, right? It works fast when you never took it before. We need a fast test."

Alleyn and Chen both dragged Scott out of the alcove by his wrists, as if they were forcing a reluctant schoolboy to join in at a dance.

"How do I take it then?" Scott asked. "With a hypo?"

Alleyn laughed. "Don't be stupid. The only hypos you can get around here shut themselves down on anything illegal. Or even anything stupid. Wait." She lay down on the ground, in the puddle of standing water, and rummaged under the bottom of the cladding that covered the warehouse. A moment later, she stood up again with a syringe in her hands. "Use this."

"No," Chekov and Scott said at the same moment.

"You're such a baby," Alleyn told Scott. "He's got a phaser. He can sterilize it."

"No," Scott repeated. "No way, Jessie. I'm not doing that."

His accent was broadening. Chekov doubted if he'd have understood the boy at all if his meaning hadn't been entirely predictable.

Alleyn glared at Chekov and pushed Scott a few feet away, out into the wind. The ensign could still hear references to 'travel clearances'. The kids wanted to get off Earth then. Drugs, enough drugs, would purchase enough blind eyes to let them do it.

Alleyn returned with Scott at her heels, looking like a drowned bulldog. "Mix it up," she ordered.

Chekov had seen enough drug education vids to know that Illyssium was either processed into a fine powder which one could inhale, or could be dissolved in water and injected, the way Jessie Alleyn had offered it to him at Quondar. The latter was more efficient, making a small dose go much further. Maybe Alleyn was being prudent with her new resources, or maybe the powdered form wasn't known here and now. The navigator sighed and wondered why Brecht’s detailed tutorial on drug dealing hadn't included any of this. Maybe he'd known Chekov's stomach wasn't up to it.

"Come here," Chekov said to Chen. In the boy's cupped palm, he mixed a pinch of the drug with a few drops of rainwater caught from the overflowing gutter of the warehouse. He filled and emptied the plastic syringe from the same source a few times, then phasered it enough to gently simmer its contents. Finally, he filled it from the solution in Chen's hand.

'I'm not doing anything that hasn't already happened,' he told himself. Scott looked scared to the verge of throwing up.

"In a vein," Alleyn said. "Or this is going to take forever. I want to get inside. I'm cold. You don't have to phaser it again. Rainwater is okay, and our Ricky washes his hands most days."

"It will only take a few seconds to cool down," Chekov said.

"Phaser it," Scott croaked out.

"Do you know how to find a vein?"

"Of course I do. I'm not a babbie."

Scott dropped the syringe as he clumsily rolled up his sleeve. Chekov caught it before it hit the puddle under their feet. The light was so bad, he doubted Scott had found a vein at all, but he was stabbing the very tip of the needle viciously into his arm, as if to punish himself for something. "Here, come out in the light. I'll do it for you."

Holding the boy's thin, white arm tightly, so he couldn't flinch away, he peered at the crook of his elbow. "Make a fist."

Scott was shaking. When Chekov emptied the syringe into the vein that had reluctantly showed itself, he felt the boy's knees give. He caught him and dragged him back into the relative shelter of the eaves.

"You'll feel better soon," Alleyn said, in the condescending tone of a grown woman. "Much better." She stuck her tongue out and licked her painted lips. "It'll take a couple of minutes."

Her clothes were soaked and clinging to her hips and breasts. She batted her eyes at Chekov. "If you like, when we're finished here, you can buy me dinner."

* * *

The Illyssium made Scott talkative. Chekov couldn't follow above a quarter of what he was saying, but he gathered that the boy had been climbing in and out of the top secret Cammell Laird facility since he'd been old enough to know that threading copper wire liberally through the padding of his parka would confuse the security sensors. His companions were now copying this trick. "And they pick up stray cats so often, the guards mostly don't pay any mind to them when they do show anything," Scott confided, happily sharing a joke at the expense of the local adult population.

"Shut up," Chen told him.

Scott giggled.

Acquiring the time travel device was proving almost too easy, as if history was a deep canyon you couldn't climb out of however hard you tried. Although his preposterously knowledgeable young guides did not know its true function, with the aid of Brecht’s sketch, they apparently had no trouble locating the undistinguished-looking box from among the other devices of alien origin being stored in preparation to being sent to area they called “Reverse Engineering Central” — A section that Scott giddily confessed that he “quite liked” and often broke into just to “see what they were about” and “wouldn’t mind having a go at” himself.

Inside ten minutes, Chekov was looking at a very familiar metallic casing.

Young Scott proudly displayed the device just out of his reach.

The navigator frowned. Looking at the object now with the expectation that it would appear alien, it seemed stubbornly like a piece of Federation tech. Something was wrong…

“Is it nae what you wanted?” the boy teased, holding the device out then pulling it back at the last moment.

“Yes,” the ensign began slowly, “However…”

“It’s in one of their lockboxes, yeah.” Scott grinned. “Dinnae fash yerself. They’re wee crackerboxes. I re-coded it. It's voice operated, now, but not to any particular voice. It just wants the password, and it'll open for you."

Alleyn leaned forward into the alcove where he was standing. "Move over," she ordered, sliding in beside the ensign. "Let’s hurry this up."

"When we gonna get out of here?" Chen asked taking a nervous glance behind him. He didn't seem to like being in the enclosed yard, full of shadows. Chekov appreciated how he felt, but couldn't shake off the fatalistic conviction that nothing could go wrong.

"Now, if we can conclude this business," he said. "This is all I want. Give me the password and you can..."

"Not until you pay up," Alleyn said, slipping a pale hand around his arm.

He firmly disentangled her grasp. "Miss, I do not pay you until I have the..."

Her young pale face hardened into a mirror of the cold business woman she would become as she pushed him hard against the wall. Chen took advantage of the distraction and tackled him. As they went rolling down the wet concrete, the phaser escaped from his belt. Scott quickly retrieved it and stood over the two of them, grinning.

"Hold him!" Alleyn instructed, going through his pants pockets.

She found the second, much larger bag of Illyssium. Chen, sitting on the ensign’s chest and using his knees and left forearm to hold down the navigator’s arms was the one who found the fragment of the Orion medallion.

"What’s this?"

“Nothing. Just something I carry for luck," Chekov replied, struggling to free himself. "It has no value to anyone else."

The boy smiled and closed his fist around the shard. “Then you not gonna mind me keeping it.”

“Why don’t you give it to your girlfriend?” the ensign suggested, since that was obviously what the fates had in mind.

Chen laughed before tossing the medallion to Alleyn. “She not like cheap jewelry. Do you, Jess?”

Alleyn looked at the shard for a moment, then she threw it at Scott, who fumbled the catch. “What is it?”

He turned it over and over in his hands. It glinted blue despite the gloom. "I'm not sure. Kirilite, I think. It's not conventional technology..."

"Do you think it's worth anything?"

"It's broken. No. I don't think so. It's interesting though..."

“What’s this junk?” From out of the bottom of his tunic pocket, Chen pulled the forgotten set of transfer coil chips. After his misadventure with Budrin, Chekov had programmed an entirely new set of chips since his half had been lost along with the clothing of his that the warlord’s servants had removed. The ensign had not had a chance to split this set with Sulu therefore he had a complete set of four chips with programming ready to activate the self-destruct on the _Nell_.

“No! No!” the navigator protested, jerking one arm free. “You mustn’t take those! I need them!”

Chen dangled the chips out of his reach. “Something good, eh?”

Chekov remembered the transfer chip necklace that the interrogator wore and the unseen object Scott had removed from his boot heel. “No, you’re going to misunderstand me, but these chips, when combined have the potential to be highly destructive….”

“Gonna destroy us all, am I?” Chen laughed and slapped him, knocking the goggles from his face. “What a mad liar!”

“I am no liar!” This time it was Chekov who could feel the echoes of his enraged shout vibrating down the corridors of time and was shaken by them. Using his free hand, he pulled the boy down close. “Listen, _little filth_,” he rasped letting all of his accumulated rage boil over and pour into the curse. “I cannot stop time. I cannot stop this from happening. I cannot stop you from remembering me. So remember this too. If, when the day comes and we meet again and I find that you have hurt my friend, know that I will hunt you down through all timelines and see that you die most horribly.”

If nothing else, the sheer proximity to insanity of Chekov’s statement severely spooked the child. He immediately got to his feet and took the phaser from Scott.

"What are we going to do to him?" Chen asked Alleyn. He held the weapon with admirable steadiness, aimed squarely at Chekov's chest. He quickly glanced about the yard — which was full of things an imaginative child could use to construct an impromptu torture chamber.

The navigator raised himself up on his elbows and raised his hands in a gesture of cautious surrender. "That phaser will not go any higher than stun."

Alleyn laughed. "Scotty, disable the safeties on the phaser."

He took it from Chen and obeyed her. Chekov watched in horror. The child had lost any shred of conscience he might have had to Illyssium's cheery complacency.

"You don't think we'll do it, do you?" Alleyn demanded of the ensign. "Have you done it yet, Monty? Show him. Show him we can do it."

Scott snapped the phaser's case shut, a case that he shouldn't have been able to open without a proprietary tool. He held it up. "Shall I disintegrate something?"

"Yes. That." She pointed to the fins of a heat dissipater unit.

Scott took aim and fired. Alarms immediately shrilled. The boy grinned happily.

Alleyn shrieked, "Run!" and took off between two banks of stacked components. Chen was on her heels, clutching the bag of Illyssium to his chest. Scott just stood there, looking between Chekov and his departing friends like a lost but unworried sheep.

"You don't know the password," he said. "You'll need to know the password."

Adult voices sounded somewhere , still distant. Chekov jumped up, took hold of Scott's collar and pulled the boy close to him, grabbing his arm for good measure.

Scott didn't resist. He just stood there, smiling faintly. "I knew if I used the phaser, it would set off the alarms," he said conversationally. "Jessie can be a wee bit of a bully."

"Why are you doing this?" Chekov demanded. "Why do you hang around with those..."

"They know how to get into places," Scott said. "Chen knows how to hack the credit outlets. And Jessie is good cover. Everyone thinks she's minding us. We can do anything. We break into flitters. We even stole a shuttle once. We couldn't take it anywhere much, because I hadn't worked out how to fool air traffic control then, but I could now..."

"But you should be at school, not..."

Scott spat on the floor. "School is for fools."

Chekov looked at a loop of wire hanging off a part-dismantled replicator, just out of reach. If he tied the boy up, so he couldn't get away, so that the security guards would find him, and hand him over to the juvenile authorities...

"You don't know the damned password," Scott said. He smiled broader. "You let me go, or I’ll nae tell it."

"I know the password." Chekov was surprised by the spiteful kick he got out of Scott's annoyance. "'Open Sesame'."

Scott looked as angry as the Illyssium would permit. "You’re a right bastard. Think you’re clever. Don’t you?"

“Not particularly.” Honestly the primary things the ensign were feeling were: wet, cold, and rather sad. “Not at the moment.”

"Over here!" someone shouted, dangerously close. Scott twisted out of his jacket, and Chekov's grasp, and vanished into the shadows.

Chekov scooped up the time travel device from where Scott had left it lying, and then touched the communicator taped to his chest underneath four or five layers of fabric. "Brecht..."

"You have the machine?"

The navigator sighed wearily. "Yes."

"Good job, Admiral," the freebooter congratulated him as the _Shonagon’s _transporter beam sparkled bleak Aberdeen out of existence. “Now things are going to start getting really tricky…”


	18. Chapter 18

“The challenge is this,” Stuart Brecht was explaining, looking nearly as weary as Chekov felt. “Now that we have the time travel device, the key to not being destroyed by it is that we must use it as little as possible.”

The ensign gave a short laugh that was perilously close to a sob. “Couldn’t we have done that by just leaving it where it was?”

They hadn’t yet left the Aberdeen time period. The _Shonagon_ was cloaked and in a high orbit beyond Pluto’s trade lanes where they were unlikely to arouse any notice.

Scott was serving as navigator. Jessie Alleyn had seen to it that everyone was provided with a cup of coffee. Chekov, wrapped in a blanket that did nothing to stave off the chill currently settled on his soul, felt worse than useless.

“We have the time travel device that so Goudchaux and Khwaja _can’t_ use it, not so we _can_ use it,” Brecht explained.

Although he still refused to admit to it, his actions made it more and more unavoidably obvious with each passing moment that Brecht was a Federation Intelligence agent of some sort. Now, his cover as a freebooter was disintegrating like his disguise from their last robbery. A crop of black hair covered his once shaved head and his dyed-green skin had now faded to a pale coppery gold. Glimpses of whoever the real person was seemed to be starting to wear through the false façade.

“If we use the time machine for small jumps forward or backwards in time,” he said. “We risk fouling our own timeline. We could slip into alternate timelines and never be able to return to our own reality. We could get trapped in time paradoxes that loop endlessly back onto our destruction. We could vanish from history. We could destroy reality itself…”

“You’re saying we can’t bring Moray back to life,” Alleyn interrupted.

“Yes,” he apologized.

“Well, you could just say as much,” Alleyn assured him, adding a measure of whisky to his coffee and then the same to her own. “Were you in love with her, Stu?”

“I didn’t think so,” Brecht admitted. “She was just a kid. A messed-up kid. I had plans for her, though. After all this was over…. I was going to make things better for her. Give her a second chance and watch her run with it. She might have made me very sorry.”

Alleyn held her cup up as toast to the departed. “Or very proud.”

The freebooter nodded and clinked his cup against hers. “I’d like to think so.”

“So what are we going to do?” Scott asked, bringing them back to the matter at hand.

Brecht took in a deep breath. “We need to go back into the past, get the treasure and use it to lure them into the present, or…”

“…Or destroy them there,” the engineer concluded.

“Yes.”

“Speaking of destruction…” Scott removed his boot heel and held up the item that had been concealed there to the ensign. “What was this junk we stole from you?”

“Transfer coil chips from the _Nell_,” Chekov explained wearily, taking the small bit of technology between two fingers and marveling that it could have survived to travel back to him intact. “I used them to create a hack into the ship’s self-destruct system.”

The engineer narrowed his eyes. “And when the hell were you going to tell me that?”

“It was obviously a plan of last resort,” the ensign replied, too dispirited to be defensive. “I had discussed the matter with Mr. Sulu. There were four chips. We split them between us so that neither of us would be making the decision unilaterally. However, when I was captured by Lord Budrin, my half of the chips was lost. I created a new set. I was going to give the replacement chips to Sulu and destroy the old ones he was carrying, but…”

“Why did you take them with you?”

“I did not intend to. I forgot they were in the pocket of the tunic.” The navigator looked down at his garments as if suddenly seeing them as riddled with sink holes and rabbit warrens. “I am not accustomed to having pockets.”

The engineer snorted, tension making him short-tempered. “That’s a poor excuse.”

“It is not an excuse, sir,” the ensign retorted, exhaustion having the same effect. “It is an explanation. We added an extra layer of clothing…”

“It was my fault,” Alleyn interjected abruptly, adding a measure of soothing alcohol to each man’s drink. “I handed it to the lad at the last minute without going through the pockets. You scared us, Peterson. Even Monty couldn’t figure out what we’d lifted off you.”

The engineer made a disparaging noise. “I’ve known it was a transfer coil chip for years, but not that it had a part of a self-destruct code written on it. But at the time…when I had no explanation… well, that kicked her imagination into gear. And you’ve seen what Jess is like when her wheels are spinning…”

“I thought it was a fancy, four-part bomb.” Alleyn laughed as she pulled a necklace very similar to the one Chen wore from beneath the neckline of her tunic. “We even made a suicide pact based on it.” She held the chip out from her body and watched it twirl in the light for a moment. “What did you say to Ricky, Peterson? When you pulled him close?”

Scott snorted. “You scared the bloody piss out of him.”

Alleyn tilted her head quizzically. “He said you cursed him.”

“I cursed _at_ him,” the ensign confessed. “I was angry. I told him that if he harmed Sulu I would hunt him down and kill him.”

“Did you say Sulu’s name?” Brecht inquired anxiously.

“No, I just said that if he hurt my friend that when we met again I would see that he died horribly.” The navigator’s cheeks began to flame. In his mind, he had been speaking to the adult Chen, but now it occurred to him full force that he had said that terrible thing to a child.

“He took it that there was a curse laid on him,” Scott reported. “He took that damned medallion to Esme and began to listen to her daft, drug-addled babblings about being able to see the future all so he could avoid meeting up again with that Russian mafia man who he thought was destined to have him killed.”

“Oh, no.” Chekov closed his eyes and shook his head. “I three-witched him… I three-witched us both.”

“You what?”

“When Chen struck me… I was angry… I spoke without fully considering what I was saying or why I was saying it. However, my strongest wish was that I could change the future so that in our time he would act in a more civilized manner.” Chekov watched the bit of self-destruct code he had helped travel through time glitter in the cockpit’s light as he held it between his fingers. “The effect, however, was that I frightened him so badly that I made his behavior more extreme. On his side, Chen turned to Esme thinking he was taking precautions against my arrival in his life, when in fact, those actions guaranteed that we would eventually be on a collision course. Thus, we are both like the characters in that play, who after having been given a glimpse of their future by the three enchantresses, find that no matter what course they take, they cannot escape that fate.”

For a moment, his companions had no response.

After a moment, Scott put a hand on his shoulder. “I think you might need a stiff drink and good lie down before we get underway again, lad.”

“Yes, sir.” He nodded, gathered the blanket about his shoulders, rose, and handed the chip back to his superior. “Thank you, sir.”

The engineer helped him collapse the seat he’d been occupying, fold out the small bunk from the wall, and extend half the divider between the cockpit and the cabin for a tiny measure of privacy.

All the time, Chekov couldn’t get the picture of the young boy with the cropped hair out of his mind… his pale arm… the syringe…

“I am so sorry, sir,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bunk.

“For what?” the engineer asked as if the same thing weren’t at the top of his mind too. After seeing the stricken look on the ensign’s face, he gave a firm shake of his head. “You did what you did under my orders.”

“Just a player strutting and fretting my hour on the stage?” the navigator asked bitterly.

The Scotsman sat down beside him. “You dinnae three-witch me, lad. All that being prisoners to the future stuff is a load of rubbish. If we still have brains in our heads, we make choices good or bad. That afternoon… the choice I made, it were a bad ‘un… And it were a horrible experience. And I never touched that loathsome shit again. Richard Chen was a just silly fool to act as he did. Instead of becoming a mad torturing bastard, he could have just as easily decided to miss his fate by being a perfect gentleman to everyone he met with a Russian accent.”

“I suppose you are right,” the navigator granted slowly.

“Of course I am.” Scott gave him another encouraging thump on the shoulder. “Now get some sleep. You’ve got some heavy math waiting for you when you wake up.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

The ensign was only half-dozing with his face turned to the wall when he overheard Scott’s voice speaking after maybe ten or fifteen minutes of silence.

“The two of you are entirely too quiet,” the engineer was commenting to his companions.

“I’m not saying anything,” Alleyn insisted.

“I know,” Scott retorted from the navigator’s station. “Both of you are not saying anything so loudly it’s near to deafening me.”

Brecht sighed. “Those chips he created…”

“No,” the engineer cut him off firmly. “No. We are not going back to the past, use the treasure as bait, and let him be captured along with it, then let the lad and Sulu plug in the self-destruct hack, and hope we can transport them both out before the _Nell _blows. No, sir. No.”

There was a very extended silence.

Jessie Alleyn sighed deeply. “Well, it wasn’t the worst idea we’ve ever had.”

The engineer snorted. “If it’s not, then I’m glad I can’t remember the cockamamie wonder who shambled past this steaming pile of horse manure to take the lead.”

* * *

_“It makes a fair dark spot for a tomb…”_

Esme’s characterization of the asteroid station’s gloom lingered in Chekov’s mind so vividly he could almost hear her thin voice echoing in its empty corridors.

He had the Andorian phaser he’d carried on Earth with him. Even though the plan was for him to be captured, there was no point in acting like he didn’t think the crew of the _Nell_ was here now, ready to step out from around the next corner.

There was no sign of the pirate ship. That did not mean that it was not hovering somewhere near, cloaked as the _Shonagon_ was now.

They had returned to Orion’s past around only a few days after they had left it to retrieve the time machine. They picked this time figuring that the pirates wouldn’t yet have finished scavenging the station.

Of course, Chekov decided, as the door to the control room overlooking the bay where the escape pods were stored whooshed open with a hollow echo, their speculations could be wrong in a number of ways. The _Nell_ could have already departed for the future in hopes of grabbing the treasure from one of the points in time where it would eventually exist. Alternately, Khwaja could have convinced his comrades to throw in their lot with one of the Orion Houses in hopes of stopping or re-shaping the course of the approaching conflict and thereby changing history. Meanwhile, the unique mixture of organic materials making up the exterior of the asteriod’s surface and confusing sensor readings of the interior now worked against them, making it difficult to determine who, if anyone, inhabited the small station now.

Personal history was very much on the ensign’s mind as he stepped towards the windows overlooking the bay. 

They had properly and respectfully disposed of Moray Morgain’s remains by disintegration. However, her body had lain on the flooring of porous natural stone for hours. They didn’t have the equipment to fully remove every trace of organic matter. Chekov imagined he could still see the outline of the bloodstain.

The young pirate lady would continue to haunt this spot for the centuries to come in the form of a riddle that would doubtlessly puzzle the Andorian researchers and threaten to invalidate their research. How could Human DNA show up on an Ancient Orion site? 

A glitter of light caught the corner of the ensign’s eye. Looking out onto the bay, he saw that not just one, but all of the escape pods had been taken down from their upright positions and were laying open on the bay floor. It was difficult to see from this angle, but the treasure pod seemed to be one of the ones askew in the middle of the bay. Carelessly scattered jewels glittered on the bay floor.

The ensign flipped open his small communicator as he turned and headed for the bay. “Chekov to _Shonagon_.”

“So, is there nobody at home to greet you, Admiral?” Brecht’s voice asked cheerily.

“So far, no,” the ensign reported. “The escape pods are all on the bay floor. They have been opened…as if they are searching for something…”

“Treasure of the Orlan Du, maybe?”

“No.” Chekov stooped to retrieve a crown that was missing a few stones here and there. “That seems to be here too.”

“Another mystery,” the freebooter concluded. “Watch your back.”

“Most definitely,” the ensign agreed peering into the tangle of heavy shadows cast by the open pod lids. “I will make further investigations and update you within the next ten minutes. Chekov out.”

The navigator blew out a long breath. Although he had willingly volunteered to take on the very hazardous role demanded of him in the scheme Brecht and Alleyn had worked out and eventually persuaded Scott to approve, he was relieved that it seemed this particular plan was not going to work out. The risk factors had seemed exceptionally high…

Noticing that he was still holding onto the defaced crown, he turned and tossed it onto the heap of treasure piled in the pod beside him.

“Where is it, you wretch?!!” something screamed, setting upon him suddenly. It was all wild hair and sharp bones. It wrapped one thin arm with a sharp-taloned hand around his chest and while the other claw pressed a knife to his neck. “Where is my shard?!!”


	19. Chapter 19

“Please put down the knife, Ms. MacLauren,” The ensign said, releasing a long breath and letting his hands drop.

There were any number of ways this mission could end in disaster for him. Chekov was sure, however, that one of those ways was not going to be from being overpowered by a tiny woman over twice his age with a serious drug problem.

“If you go for your phaser, I’ll gut you,” the medic threatened, pressing her blade against his throat, and smacking his hand away while she searched his pockets. “Ye left-handed bastard.”

“The weapon only goes to stun,” he warned as she confiscated it and his communicator.

“And just how much killing do you think you’ll be needing, laddie?” she retorted sarcastically, tossing her’s — which turned out to be a ceremonial dagger with half its jewels missing — back into the treasure pod.

The navigator put his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes in disgust with himself for being taken in by such a ruse. “I am certainly glad you did not have to resort to violence. I might have died of boredom before you were able to saw through the first layer of my epidermis.”

The older woman tilted her head to one side hopefully. “You’ll not be having any of my medicine with you, will you, lad?”

“No.” The ensign gave a disgusted sigh. “I sold it all to some children yesterday.”

“You’re being quite the smart-aleck with me now,” she scolded.

The Russian gestured to his neck, which probably still bore the imprint of her dagger. “We got off to a bad start, didn’t we?”

She pointed at her own neck to remind him he’d done the same to her aboard the _Nell_. “Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”

“Where are your friends?” the Russian asked, reasoning that her inquiry about drugs and overall manner might be an indication that she was alone on the station.

“Oh, they’ll be here soon,” the medic assured him, gesturing vaguely towards the ceiling of the bay with the phaser. “And yours?”

He opened his hand for the communicator. “We can call them if you wish.”

“I do not.” She deactivated that device and tossed it out of reach.

Chekov frowned as the communicator went skittering away into the dark shadows of the far end of the bay. He couldn’t see the utility of having a device like these old-fashioned Orion communicators that could be completely deactivated. It was going to be a pain to find it and get it re-booted before his next check-in was due.

Esme turned and pointed the Andorian phaser at him as if she very much meant to be a pain. “So where’s my shard?”

The navigator crossed his arms. “I was not aware that any of the shards were your particular property.”

“Oh, were you not?” she retorted. “All my life people have been making the mistake of claiming things they didn’t think were my particular property. I assure you they lived to regret it.”

“People such as Mr. Scott and Ms. Alleyn?” he asked pointedly.

“You know them as they are now,” she objected. “There was a time when it took stern measures to keep them from taking anything that wasn’t nailed down.”

“You might be surprised at what I’ve seen,” he informed her, stooping to retrieve a discarded necklace and return it to the treasure pod. “What I fail to see is why one shard of a broken medallion should be of any importance to anyone.”

“Oh, it’ll mean nothing to a daft thing like you,” she scoffed. She ran a bony hand through the top layer of the treasure pod, lighting on a precious stone the size of a hen’s egg. When she held it up to the dim light of the bay, it cast weird fragments of prismed light on her wrinkled face and large eyes. “But I know how to read the shard. It speaks to me. Lets me see around the corners. And let me tell you, laddie, the circle is closing. Closing fast now.”

Chekov picked up a de-nuded scepter and tossed it in with the bejeweled junk. “Ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous to you.” She smiled and tossed the jewel to him. “You couldn’t read a sign if it were in front of your nose waving a red flag. But I have always known how to pierce the veil. That’s why I’ll have what’s mine in the end.”

“And what if, in the end,” he asked seriously, holding the stone between two fingers, “what is yours — what you truly deserve — is nothing?” He threw the stone into the treasure pod and held out his empty hand.

She regarded him silently for a moment, then made a dismissive noise. “Oh, you’re a sour thing to be so young,” she said, twisting her mouth. “Have it as you will then. Just say the shard brings me luck, for it always has. It’s a lucky charm.”

“That’s even greater nonsense,” the ensign objected. “That is just something I said when I gave the shard to Chen.”

The medic tilted her head quizzically. “So you think you have something to do with it?”

“I know that I do,” the navigator replied wearying of her irrationality. “I can explain the exact function of the medallion to you in detail.”

It was now her turn to scoff. “Nonsense.”

“No, you were right. This is a circle that is closing.” He turned towards the exit of the bay and beckoned her to follow. “Come with me. I will show you.”

The older woman frowned and took a step backwards. “No.”

“Are you frightened of the truth?” he demanded pitilessly.

“I’m not frightened of anything you can tell me.”

“Very well then.” He beckoned once more and set off in the direction of the exit without waiting to see if she would follow.

When he arrived in the control room overlooking the bay where the escape pods were stored, he could hear her footsteps behind him. He sat down in the seat before the main panel and opened a storage compartment directly beneath it.

“These are the medallions in their raw form.” He explained taking out two blank disks and handing one to her so she could see the smooth surface before processing. The other, he slid into a slot in the main panel. “They are used to create security devices that lock and unlock the escape pods. To key them, they are placed in this encoder and given a vocal imprint. Like so…”

The ensign located the only escape pod that happened to be on its uprights and initiated a keying sequence. Leaning in, he spoke the first word that came to mind, “_Dobroserdechnyy_.”

“What does that mean?” the medic asked as the machinery spun and whirred.

“It’s a Russian word,” the ensign explained. “It means “good-hearted”— to be forgiving, kind, gentle.” He could not resist adding sarcastically, “Perhaps you might have heard of these things?”

Esme scowled as he handed her the completed medallion.

“The markings on the surface are a machine coding for the password,” the navigator explained. “When it is spoken, the proper escape pod is activated. The medallion for the treasure pod was accidentally dropped and broke into five pieces. The fifth piece was stolen from me by Richard Chen in Aberdeen. He gave it to his girlfriend, Jessie Alleyn…”

The medic’s eyes blazed. “She wasn’t his…”

“That is significant to you,” Chekov concluded. “Was Richard Chen one of the pieces of your property that Ms. Alleyn was inconveniently in possession of?”

“She didn’t deserve him.” The words seemed to spill out of her before she could catch them. “Our Jessie is no more loyal than a cat. Never has been.”

MacLauren seemed greatly disturbed by his debunking of the shard’s alleged magical powers. It was such a ridiculous notion — like ascribing thaumaturgical powers to some particular tricorder….And all the more tragic because of the power of the mistaken notion’s power to destroy lives…

“What about her child?” he pressed bitterly. “What did the shard tell you to say that made Ms. Alleyn abandon Moray Morgain?”

“I’ve always been more of a mother to that girl than Jessie ever could be,” the medic countered sharply. “She’s always followed me like a puppy. You can’t understand such things, but it’s death for Moray to be near Jessie.”

Chekov closed his eyes and shook his head. “You are only saying that because of what happened here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Goudchaux stabbed Miss Morgain.”

Shock quickly hardened into disbelief in the medic’s features. “You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie?” Chekov gestured towards the communications panel to his left. “You can call the _Shonagon_ to verify.”

“And that’s a good excuse for your lie right there,” the medic sneered. “You’re only trying to trap me, aren’t you?” She held out the medallion he’d keyed. “Well, to hell with you and your _good heart_.”

Turning, she threw the medallion against the wall of the control room. It shattered like glass against the hard surface as she exited.

The ensign sighed deeply as he rose to follow her. The medic was not unintelligent, but it was clear that she preferred to hold onto her delusions rather than to face reality. It was probably pointless to argue with her. It would be wise, though, he reasoned, to retrieve his phaser…

He remembered that he had a spare weapon in his quarters. Seeing that her attention was once more directed towards the bay and her hunt for the fifth shard, he turned down the corridor that would take him past the docking bay.

The ensign’s steps slowed as he approached the entrance to the main docking bay. There seemed to be a lot of noise and vibration coming from that direction. It was as if there was a ship docked in the bay.

There had been no call from the _Shonagon_…

The navigator mentally corrected. He had gotten no call from the _Shonagon_ since his communicator was deactivated. Perhaps they had decided it was wisest not to try to contact him via the station’s communication system.

Of course, the other possibility was…

The door to the docking bay opened to reveal Bardon Goudchaux’s smiling face.

Chekov turned, only to run straight into Khwaja’s waiting arms.

“Well,” the pirate captain sneered triumphantly. “would ya look what we have here?”

* * *

“We need to talk.”

The gap between what Khwaja was saying and the truth was more than usually apparent since at that moment the Orion had the ensign bound to the chair in the control room overlooking the escape pod bay with an adhesive gag over his mouth. It was obvious that the pirate had disobeyed Goudchaux’s orders to take him directly to the _Nell_ and brought him there instead not for a conversation but to have him be the unwilling audience for some sort of insane monologue.

“I need to explain a few things to you about who the good guys and bad guys are in all this.” Khwaja was typing commands in to the communication panel and bringing up a variety of screens as if he wished to demonstrate something just as Chekov had done for Ms. MacLauren. “I know you think you understand, but there’s a few surprises. Here’s the biggest one; you’re one of the bad guys.”

The pirate smiled at the way the navigator’s eyes widened in protest at this scurrilous falsehood.

“There, that’s an awful shock.” He playfully tapped the ensign’s nose. “And so confusing. You’re confused. Stuart Brecht is confused. No one is who they’re supposed to be. Everyone is confused. Except me. I’m seeing things clearly now. And I’m going to help you understand.” He gave the navigator an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “You see, that was my job all along.”

Chekov leaned as far away from him as he could. In his previous experience so far on this voyage, a cheerful confident Khwaja who was ready to explain things to him was likely to prove to be 100% full of crap.

“We had lots of warning that this situation with the treasure and the theft of the time machine was going to happen because of that clever little message you programmed into the warp engines,” the pirate continued, not seeming to be concerned by or even to notice his wariness. “Your message got very distorted after the first century of transmission, so we had a mistaken idea about what the scope of mission should be... and that has proved to be very, very, very significant. However, the powers that care about such things have had a lot of notice that this bit of trouble was coming down the road.”

Chekov took a deep breath in through his nose and braced himself. Everything Khwaja had just said was plausible. As the navigator and Sulu had discussed, the emergency signal he’d programmed into the warp engines could have been triggered as they travelled backwards in time. There could have been a few bursts that would have been readable by Intelligence. It was also possible that the distortion would have grown as they traveled further back in time; misleading those reading them about how far back they had gone into Orion’s past.

Now that Khwaja had prepared a grounding of plausible occurrences, though, there was no telling how fantastic a tale he intended to fabricate atop them.

“Before you had lost your baby teeth, people in Intelligence had started to draw negative conclusions about your character all because of this…” The pirate had the computer display a long message on the screen before him.

“These escape pods are wonderful things.” Khwaja commented as the ensign read the message. “They are virtually indestructible and undetectable. Their communications systems can be programed to release a subspace message at a pre-arranged point in the future… even in the rather distant future. The encrypted message might have to travel quite some distance, yes. But, who’s going to bother it? Maybe a few curious ears listening in, perhaps…”

The message was primarily composed of financial market information with fairly specific trading instructions. It was addressed to his friend Britta. The date said he’d sent it during his second year at the Academy.

“You see, kitten, you’re rotten to the core.” Khwaja clucked his tongue disapprovingly. "Why would anyone else want to make some old girlfriend of yours into one of the wealthiest women in the Federation? Trust me, I, personally, don't believe in independently wealthy women. It's bad karma, and I think you're going to regret it. It might be better for you if she does run off with someone else."

Chekov blinked incredulously at the screen in front of him. He hadn't been listening to Khwaja. He was remembering the second year Market Economics lectures where they'd been set an assignment to develop a 'beat the market' investment strategy. His own attempt, a statistical model, had been as unsuccessful as anyone else's, but the mere existence of the course made a plausible background for him to propose the strategy to Britta... and suggest that she implement it. He'd been a cadet, while she'd been a civilian student. He would be breaking the rules by applying his coursework to real markets. She was similarly constrained in theory, but would find it far easier in practice. It was pretty unlikely they — she — would ever be caught.

And Britta, he recalled, would take great delight in the charade of *not* mentioning the plan to him. Looking back, it explained several occasions when Britta had been extremely... well, grateful, for no discernible reason.

“Unless she’s managed to spend it all, you’re going to be obscenely rich.” Khwaja smiled and gave the horrified ensign a mocking congratulatory pat on the arm. “It was obvious to Intelligence what had happened. Even though you seemed to be straight-arrow, you cracked under pressure. When Goudchaux and his gang came into possession of the treasure and the time travel device and started doing their little hops around the century, you used it to send some hints to your girlfriend as to what the market would be doing. Clever. Very clever. And subtle. Clever and subtle is dangerous. That’s why I was supposed to break cover and get close to you. See what was going on inside that mixed-up little kitten head. Watch for that moment when it all got to be too much for you. Let you know that I was being pulled in the same direction and that you could trust me because I understood. That’s how we were going to neutralize you as a threat.”

Chekov frowned underneath the gag. The one element of Khwaja’s oration that rang most true was that their entire relationship was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of his most basic character.

“Of course, you know, none of that was necessary, because you didn’t send this message.” The pirate smiled and tapped the screen. “I did.”

The gag didn’t entirely muffle the growl of rage that rose up in the ensign’s throat.

“We didn’t muck around popping back and forth in time in our century where your message turned up,” Khwaja continued, unperturbed. “Thanks to Esme’s weird obsessions, we were unexpectedly sent back three thousand years to Orion’s past. And I discovered that my deep hatred for my people was of what they had become, not what they were…”

The pirate paused, his turquoise eyes full of the deep emotion the ensign had glimpsed but had never heard him express while they were on their missions to rob the Great Houses of the Orions.

“And I ceased to be a tool of the Federation and could see that the timeline that I was sacrificing lives to maintain was a dark and bloody one.” Khwaja drew himself up proudly. “You can see this too. This is why I have freed you of your servitude to this evil cause. I have seen true nobility in you, kitten. I know you will be true not to me, but to yourself and your sense of honor when the moment comes to be honorable.”

Chekov merely blinked at him, at that moment, even without the gag, he would not have known quite what to say in the face of such an assertion.

“You have seen the peace and beauty that the wars of the Great Houses will destroy.” The pirate stroked the side of the ensign’s face. “You have seen the evil men this conflict will raise up, who must be stopped in the name of innocent blood.”

Again the navigator wasn’t sure what he would have said if he would have been free to say anything. The benefits that the Federation eventually brought elsewhere in the universe in the future seemed pale in comparison to the horrors that Budrin and his ilk were about to wreak in this corner of the galaxy.

“Also,” Khwaja added, smoothing an errant curl back from the ensign’s forehead. “As you can see, your Federation’s Intelligence Service has trained me to be an excellent blackmailer. This is just a tiny sample of what I am capable of when I am motivated… and I am _very_ motivated. Give up thinking about your future and your career, kitten, because all that can be — and, who knows, perhaps already has been — ruined by me.”

Now, were the gag removed, the Russian would not have been at a loss for words. He doubted the pirate would have found them very pleasant, though.

The pirate laughed and tousled his hair. “I see you need some time to think things over. Well, you don’t have very long. I’ve got a little surprise to prepare for our friend, Stuart Brecht, then I’ll be back to take you to the _Nell_, where you need to be in a very uncharacteristically cooperative mood if you know what’s good for you…which you usually don’t. Just concentrate on this…” He turned the ensign’s head in the direction of the damning message still displaying on the screen. “Having a time machine means that there’s no mistake too big to be fixed.”

* * *

Chekov was far too agitated, irritated, and fearful not merely of the prospects of what might happen to him but also what he might end up doing once he was taken aboard the _Nell_ to be bored, but he was getting rather tired of being left tied to the control room chair by the time he saw Goudchaux amble onto the deck of the bay.

“What are you looking for?” he called out to MacLauren, who was still scavenging through the treasure pod. “This?”

Although the medic had claimed not to believe the ensign when he had informed her of Goudchaux’s murder of Morgain, the way the older woman started at the sound of the pirate captain’s voice tended to indicate otherwise. “Is that my shard, Bardon?” she called out in her tremulous voice, as she steadied herself against the sides of the pod.

Goudchaux smiled cruelly as he closed his hand around the piece of the medallion he was holding up. “It’s only yours if I say it is.”

MacLauren straightened, made an impatient noise through her nose, then held out her hand for the shard. “Then you’d best be saying it is.”

“Don’t threaten me, old woman,” the pirate captain warned. “What could you possibly have to back up a threat?”

The medic’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s Moray?”

Goudchaux’s lips thinned to a hard, cold line. “If you want the shard now,” he said, taking the piece and throwing it into one of the open escape pods, “then you’re going to have to scramble for it.”

MacLauren shot him a look of pure hatred. ‘You wanted revenge and riches, Bardon. Both are sitting in front of you at this moment because of what I and that shard have shown you.”

The pirate captain spread his empty hands. “Then you should be expecting nothing but my gratitude.”

The medic looked back and forth at the distance she’d need to cross to get to the pod where he’d thrown the shard. “Then why am I expecting nothing but your knife in my back?”

“You’ve always said that you’ll be the death of me,” Goudchaux reminded her wryly. “You’d have to outlive me to do that, wouldn’t you?”

“Aye,” MacLauren granted. “I suppose I would at that.”

As the medic made her way across the bay to the escape pod, Chekov was puzzling about how Goudchaux could have obtained the fifth shard. As far as the navigator knew, that piece of the medallion was no longer in the Ancient Orion past. He had taken it on its journey through time. In Esme’s fanciful way of stating things, that circle had come to a close. Brecht had given Budrin and other Orion potentates three other shards. If the shard Goudchaux had was genuine at all, it was the fourth one, not MacLauren’s special fifth one. The medic would surely spot the difference at once…

Unfortunately, waiting to see if the medic would recognize that she was being handed off the wrong shard made the ensign miss the crucial seconds where he might have seen that the pirate captain was pulling a Klingon disruptor out of his jacket to vaporize the old woman.

“Wrong again,” Goudchaux concluded as MacLauren melted into orange air.

Chekov struggled impotently against his bonds as the pirate captain calmly returned his weapon to its holster inside his jacket. 

Khwaja’s footsteps echoed hollowly in the bay as he entered, unknowingly only seconds too late to avert the murder of his colleague.

“What’s that?” Goudchaux called out to him as unconcernedly as if he’d been doing nothing more suspicious than clipping his fingernails the entire time.

“A little something for our friend Brecht,” the Orion replied jovially, placing something that the ensign couldn’t see into the treasure pod. “Where’s Esme?”

“She headed back to the _Nell_,” the pirate captain lied without skipping a beat. “Can’t get along without her medicine for long. Where’s our little friend?”

“Thinking things over.” Khwaja gave his captain a fraternal thump on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. He’ll come around.”

Goudchaux smiled his lethal smile. “Oh, I know he will.”


	20. Chapter 20

“It’s your choice, Goudchaux,” Kwhaja snapped impatiently, gesturing at the pilot’s console. “I can take a stab at either the piloting or the math.”

Chekov frowned. He didn’t like hearing the word “stab” used in a sentence while he was within arm’s reach of the pirate captain.

After much shouting, manhandling, bullying, and vile threats, they had all ended up on the _Nell’s_ bridge. The ensign stood with his hands manacled behind him while the pirate captain brooded over whether or not he was actually going to permit the navigator to perform the task they had just spent a good half-hour coercing him into executing.

“Either of the Academy boys we’ve got are going to do a better job than me.” Khwaja spread his hands as if weighing the merits of Chekov on one side against Sulu on the other. “Either can be used as a hostage against the other. This one is awake and saying he’ll cooperate.”

The pirate captain leaned back in his seat and raised a dubious eyebrow at the Russian. “Forgive me if I’m dubious of his motivations.”

“He knows what will happen to his friend if he resists,” Chen said, without turning around from his station at weaponry.

Chekov cast a glare in his direction, wishing that the interrogator was once more the scrawny boy from Aberdeen whose neck he had some hope of wringing.

The pirates had Sulu unconscious in a stasis containment unit located next to the engine room. He was unharmed for the moment, but far from safe.

“Much more than that.” Khwaja smiled and leaned forward so that he could chuck the ensign under the chin. “I suspect he’s under direct orders to cooperate. Aren’t you, kitten?”

Chekov was so agitated by this point that were he not under direct orders not to reveal his direct orders under any circumstances, he would have confirmed to the irritating bastards that they had guessed one element correctly.

Goudchaux crossed his arms. “Why would Brecht do that?”

“Because we’re playing chess now and not all the moves make sense at first,” Khwaja explained glibly. “Brecht is willing to sacrifice this little.. oh, let’s not insult him and call him a pawn… a knight, then... to get us out of Orion’s past and back into the time we all came from.”

The pirate captain maintained an obstinate frown on his face. “Why?”

“Gives him more leeway to use that fancy time machine to find a place and time to destroy us without wreaking havoc on the timeline,” the Orion offered.

This explanation did manage to elicit a smile and nod from Goudchaux. “Which is in line with what we want him to be doing.”

Khwaja graced his commander with a pearly smile of his own. “Yes.”

Chekov had not yet been able to glean much of a picture of their overall strategy from their byplay. It was however, obvious that as Brecht had warned, Khwaja had a deep familiarity with Brecht’s standard methods and tactics.

“Very well.” Goudchaux swiveled his seat back so he could use his foot to push the ensign forward. “Have a seat, young man. And get to work.”

When the manacles on his wrists were released, the navigator took a moment to straighten his clothing and to remind himself that another part of his orders was that he was not to confront the pirate captain about the fact that he knew of the murder (now murders) Goudchaux had committed. Brecht, Scott, and Alleyn had all been quite adamant in their assessment that such a provocation was likely to lead to the ensign’s own untimely demise.

He sat down at the _Nell’s_ navigation console. Khwaja had already done a great deal of the preliminary work to prepare for the “slingshot” maneuver that would propel the small ship three thousand years forward in time. The ensign oriented himself to their current position and rapidly paged through the available options.

"Finding a sunny spot to your liking?” Khwaja asked, leaning one elbow on the helm.

By force of habit, Chekov looked up from the astro charts on his board to check the position displaying on the main viewscreen. They were twenty light years from where Quondar would be, but away from the main trade routes that led between the port and dozens of worlds that traded, legally or illegally, with the Orion merchants who used Quondar. The ships that hurried back and forth, laden with precious elements and less savory, sentient cargoes would be too far away to register on the _Nell's_ sensors, and they hoped the reverse was true.

"There are... two stars of the correct magnitude," Chekov said. "One of them has two habitable planets, but no recorded..."

"Choose the other one," Khwaja said.

"It's not so simple," Chekov said stubbornly. "The other has a broad asteroid belt."

"Your precious Captain Kirk did a slingshot around Sol right next to your beloved, blasted, and heavily populated planet Earth," the Orion pointed out unkindly. "Stop being so squeamish." He tapped the screen in front of the navigator. "You have all the information you need, stellar mass, planetary orbits?"

"If the information in the computer is accurate," Chekov conceded.

"I never skimped on navigational data." Goudchaux boasted, crossing his arms behind his head and leaning back in his seat. "I hacked this database from a Starfleet cruiser. Only the best for my ship and my crew."

“Only the sharpest blades and most powerful disruptors?” Chekov wanted to ask. Instead, he focused on the complex balance of data he had been ordered to create for these miscreants. 

Even with the most exotic calculations, there was a wonderful purity in working with numbers. Numbers were predictable. One had the assurance that no matter how challenging the problem, eventually a solution could be found, balance could be restored. Numbers were so unlike people…

After several moments, the navigator finally lifted his fingers from his controls and announced, “Course computed and on your board.”

"Well then, we're ready on your word." Khwaja looked over his shoulder for the final signal from his commander.

Goudchaux gripped the armrests of his chair and nodded. “Let’s break down the walls of time, then.”

It started as a rumbling vibration, the engines trying to rip themselves free of the ship that shackled them to reality, and rose until it became painful, then numbing, then bright, then transparent, and they crashed through it, back into now.

"Where are we?" the pirate captain snapped.

When Chekov didn't answer, shaking his head to dislodge the otherness, blinking the timelight out of his eyes, Khwaja pushed him aside and started demanding sense from the computer. "Sensors aren't functioning. I'm looking for nav beacons. Can you pick anything up through comms?"

Chen leaned over to the station adjacent to his own. "No. No comms."

Chekov glanced round the bridge and wondered why everyone seemed so much less disorientated than him. Trying to keep his eyes and his mind open to track their course through nowhere had probably been a mistake. He shook himself again and stared at the navigation panel. It was blinking randomly at him.

"Nothing at all?" Goudchaux demanded. "Not even on subspace?"

Chekov gave up on the auto-restore routines and got down on his knees to look at the damage inside the console.

"It doesn't matter," Khwaja decided. "As soon as we have sensors, we can adjust those to scan for beacons."

Orange, yellow, and red damage control warnings were flashing on every console. The pirates scrambled to tend to each.

“Another trip like that will blow this tub apart,” Goudchaux growled as he wrestled with a more than a dozen complaints from vital systems connected to the ship’s propulsion.

“So we get another ship,” Khwaja countered easily as he crossed to get the sensors back on line. “_Black Beauty_ is in port at Quondar. That’ll get us started. Soon, you’ll be able to have any ship you want.”

As cunning as Goudchaux seemed to be, Chekov wondered if the pirate captain had any inkling of what sort of potential asset he had in Khwaja. Brecht had been as adamant in his demurrals when pressed to provide any specifics about the Orion’s job description as he had been on his own. However, it was obvious from the top secret information Khwaja was now blurting out casually that Goudchaux had as a confederate a rogue Intelligence agent or high level asset of some sort. The pirate captain had leapt from a minimally lucrative career of hijacking small freighters to being in a position to threaten the existence of the Federation itself in a single bound. The navigator hoped this sudden suffusion of unmerited power was not quite registering in the madman’s head just yet.

“We’re three days out from our original selves finding the treasure pod,” Khwaja reported, apparently after being able to coax a successful re-boot of the sensor array. “Nice work, kitten. Brecht is going to assume that we’re going to want to steal that time machine.”

Goudchaux turned to him sharply. “We don’t?”

“We just traveled in time perfectly well without it.” The Orion gestured impatiently towards the helm. “We have —not one — but two hostages we can force help us again… and again and again.”

The pirate captain’s eyes narrowed. “I want that machine.”

This, Chekov decided, as he sat on the deck attempting to bypass the circuitry in his console that had been damaged in the time jump, was as good a sign as any that Goudchaux did not understand what a fantastic opportunity to wreak havoc he had in his hands. He was simply an evil, greedy pirate.

“Yes,” Khwaja, who obviously did understand all the opportunities open to them, drew in a deep breath to marshal his patience. “Yes. And Brecht knows that. And he’s waiting until the last minute to put it into the treasure pod so that he can limit the amount of time that it will be there for us to try to take it. Boring to stand guard duty for three thousand years, so my guess is three days is going to be more to his taste.”

“How far are we from the treasure?”

The Orion apparently had to consult the sensor readings twice before he believed them. “It says here that we’re practically on top of the damned thing.” He raised a suspicious eyebrow at the ensign.

“I offered you the possibility of two different stars,” Chekov pointed out. “You made the final decision. As pilot, you controlled the braking maneuver. You are much more responsible for our current position than I am.”

“Just a fantastic coincidence, then?” the Orion concluded mockingly. “Oh, my kitten is definitely a sturdy young knight, isn’t he? Not a pawn at all. Well, will you sound the siren call, or shall I?”

“Don’t lose your head, Khwaja,” Goudchaux interjected as a reminder that he was still playing the part of the captain of the vessel.

Chekov wondered if the pirate realized what a puppet he’d become and how fast the time was approaching when Khwaja would be free to cast him aside completely. Conversely, he was curious how essential Goudchaux would seem to the Orion’s plans after he discovered the pirate captain had picked up the habit of isolating crew members and murdering them…

“Sorry,” the Orion apologized with an airy wave of the hand to his puppet-king as he passed on his way back to the helm. “Would you like me to bring the pod aboard, sir?”

The pirate captain frowned. “We don’t need the medallion?”

“The computer can fake that signal,” Khwaja explained, simultaneously demonstrating. “Now that we know what it is.”

Feeling it was a bit undignified to remain seated on the deck while the Orion was at the helm beside him, Chekov finished up his patch of the nav console and resumed his position in time to see the treasure pod disappear from the lower corner of the main viewscreen.

Khwaja switched views so they could watch it slowly move into the _Nell’s_ tiny bay.

Chekov was once more struck by how incongruously organic the treasure pod appeared in contrast to the surroundings of the bay. The converted escape pod looked like some barnacle-covered sea refuse that might have been encountered by real pirates…

The ensign stopped himself. The “real pirates” were the scoundrels he was with right now.

Khwaja leaned forward to articulate the command “Open sesame” into the comm unit.

Here, the navigator reflected, was yet another jarring collision of the fantasies of adventure from his childhood and the disturbing realities of his present. The Orion even looked like a character from one of Shahrazad’s tales. The plunder being revealed by the slowly opening lid of the escape pod was undeniably real. The Orlan Du were a creation that the ensign himself had helped fabricate and their robberies were ones he had helped commit.

“I’ll go take a look,” Goudchaux announced, rising.

“Don’t bother,” Khwaja advised, moving past him on his way to the sensor controls. “The time machine isn’t there yet.” 

The Orion rapidly input a number of commands into the computer. In response, the lid of the treasure pod slowly re-sealed. Lights began to flash as the bay re-pressurized and the pod began its stately descent back into open space. 

“This is only to let Brecht know that we’re looking,” Khwaja explained with a smile. “And to arm my little surprise.”

Chekov frowned. There weren’t words for how much he disliked being part of this game of chess with explosive “surprises” hidden all over the board.

“You think Brecht has some sort of a sensor implanted on the hull of the pod that alerts him if it’s been opened?” Goudchaux asked.

“Almost certainly,” Khwaja answered as he crossed back to the helm. He then made a vague gesture at the space surrounding them. “Or he’s just staying cloaked and patrolling the area.”

“And when they take the treasure pod aboard the _Shonagon_ to add the time machine…” The pirate captain gave a toothy grin as he considered the possibility.

“It’s goodbye to Mr. Brecht,” the Orion confirmed. “And we are free to operate as we choose.”

“Chen, I’m not liking the look of some of these indicators,” Goudchaux said, pointing at the orange damage control lights still flashing wildly on the panels surrounding him. “Take a look at the engine room. And, while you’re at it, put our guest in cold storage. The boy’s obviously had enough excitement to last him for centuries.”

* * *

“Please, you must listen to me,” Chekov said, although he knew he might have better luck having a conversation with a pillar of stone.

Chen had re-activated the manacles on his wrists and escorted him — none too gently - to the chamber near the engines where they kept the stasis device. The room was no larger than the cabin he’d been confined in.

Sulu lay sleeping under the cover of a transparent lid. A bluish atmosphere partially obscured Chekov’s view of him. The bed of the stasis chamber did not look as though it was designed to accommodate two individuals. Apparently the pirates believed they could crowd two hostages in together somehow.

The interrogator made no sign that he had even heard the ensign speak as he crossed to the controls that would open the lid of the stasis chamber.

“Goudchaux killed Ms. MacLauren,” Chekov said, leading with the most relevant bit of information he had not been forbidden to reveal, as he watched the interrogator position Sulu on his side.

Chen turned to him, a sharp frown creasing his normally impassive features. “You lie.”

The ensign straightened. “I have never lied to you. Not now. Not in Aberdeen.”

The look on the interrogator’s face and the rapidity with which he crossed to him made Chekov momentarily doubt the wisdom of admitting to this fact.

“So it _was _you.” Chen grasped the front of the navigator’s tunic and lifted him up so far that he had to stand on tiptoes to keep in contact with the ground. “Not so little now, am I? _Little filth_...”

“It was easier to get your attention then” The navigator met the taller man’s eyes evenly. “I do not retract anything I said.”

“Nothing makes any difference.” Chen released him with a shove. “Get in.”

“He intends to kill you all,” the ensign warned.

“Why?”

It struck the ensign in that moment that although Chen was an interrogator, he did not usually tend to ask very many questions. This one, though quite pertinent, was not one that Chekov himself had taken time to put a great deal of thought into.

“Is the fact that he is mad and evil not reason enough for you?” the ensign answered impatiently. “Miss Morgain he killed because she fought with him when he was…”

Chen released him so suddenly, the ensign staggered backwards to retain his balance.

“He killed Moray?” the interrogator asked, an expression of shock and dismay twisting his features into something approaching a very normal human reaction.

“Yes,” the ensign confirmed. “He stabbed her when the three of you escaped the station.”

Chen bared his teeth ferociously. “He said that at the last minute she decided to stay behind with Jessie.”

“At the last minute, he stabbed her,” the navigator corrected. “Ms. MacLauren, he lured into an escape pod by saying he had the fifth shard. Then he shot her in the back.”

“Why?” The interrogator underlined the urgency of his inquiry by grabbing the ensign’s shirtfront and shaking him. “And why not kill you before you tell me this?”

“Because he means to kill you next,” the ensign speculated.

It was remarkable how the pressure of impending mayhem tended to focus and stimulate his cognitive resources.

“He can try,” Chen sneered. “Why kill me?”

This was a bit harder puzzle to crack. “He thinks you might prevent him from doing something he wishes to do?”

“Such as?” the interrogator asked, giving him another good shake.

“I do not know.” Chekov chewed his bottom lip. “He seems to want this time travel device very badly… I cannot imagine why. It seems to be nothing but trouble.”

“Lotta money in that sort of thing,” the pirate informed him cynically. “Also he has a daft notion of him being an Admiral if Monty hadn’t come along and taken all the notice from him.”

“When they were young officers aboard the _Lydia Lee_?” Chekov asked, remembering Scott’s story of his early days aboard that ship and how his captain’s recognition of his talents had helped him leave the merchant service and enter Starfleet. He also recalled the defaced portrait of Scott he had found in Goudchaux’s locker. “Mr. Scott did not go into a great deal of detail or give evidence that would implicate you and Ms. MacLauren specifically, but he indicated that he believed the two of might have initiated an incident that necessitated his leaving Earth precipitously and finding employment on the _Lydia Lee_. I assume that if Goudchaux had the time machine, he might wish to alter that event and also might expect you and Ms. MacLauren to object?”

Chekov held his breath. He knew he was wading into the tangled interpersonal relationship between Mr. Scott, Ms. Alleyn, Chen, and Ms. MacLauren — which he did not fully understand… and where emotions still seemed to be rather raw…

“Yeah.” The interrogator eased his grip enough to allow the navigator to stand flat-footed on the deck. “Even knowing how it all turns out. Yeah…” As Chen’s memories replayed themselves, his grip began to re-tighten. “And if we get a time machine, there’s other things I’m gonna do with that time… Damn Goudchaux…”

Chekov took a deep breath and decided to press what felt like an advantage by gambling on a speculation based on what he’d witnessed in Aberdeen. “Also, I know you have no goodwill for Mr. Brecht or Mr. Scott, but if Khwaja’s plan succeeds, Ms. Alleyn will also be on the _Shonagon_ when it explodes…”

The interrogator’s face hardened. “_Little filth_!” Chen gave him another hard shake before switching his grip to the back of the ensign’s tunic and pushing him towards the stasis chamber. “Shut your mouth now and get into the box.”

Chekov sighed as the interrogator roughly released his manacles and boosted him up to sitting on the bed of the chamber. Interpersonal relationships were so difficult to predict. He had been sure that Chen would choose self-sacrifice to protect Ms. Alleyn, but apparently not…

“Lie down,” the interrogator ordered implacably.

Glimpsing the cord that held the transfer coil chip medallion around Chen’s neck, the navigator decided to give sentiment one more try.

“Remember what I told you in Aberdeen,” he said, pointing at the necklace. Moving carefully, he then removed two matching chips from his pocket. “These are nothing separately, but when combined…”

Chen’s eyes opened wide. The bluish light from the stasis bed shone on his face weirdly. One could almost see history re-writing itself in his mind, personal paradigms shifting, or as Esme might have said “circles closing.”

“I can destroy everything…” he concluded slowly.

Chekov released a long breath. These were not his orders. This was not a carefully planned move in Brecht and Khwaja’s chess game. The stasis chamber that he was about to be confined inside might survive the initial blast when the ship self-destructed, but could not sustain life without power. If Chen destroyed the _Nell_, then all this was over.

“This set must be inserted on the bridge at navigation control,” he said, handing the chips over to the interrogator. “Sulu has the other two. His chips must go into engineering control.”

Chen held out the chip on his necklace. “What’s this?”

“Backup copy.” The ensign made a dismissive gesture. “Trust me — It’s a long story…”

The interrogator frowned, looking back and forth between the chips in his hand and the chip on his necklace. “Esme always said she’d be the cause that bastard’s death.”

The navigator met his eyes boldly. “She doesn’t have to be alive for that to be true.”

Suddenly there was the sound of boot-steps outside in the corridor. The doorway slid open to reveal Goudchaux’s spectral grin. “Still dawdling, are we?”

“Reminiscing about old times,” the ensign commented wryly, taking his place beside Sulu.

“Just as well.” The pirate captain unexpectedly gestured him towards the door. “Khwaja needs you for something.” He then favored both the interrogator and the navigator with a smile that was absolutely bone-chilling. “Last little details to take care of.”

* * *

Before releasing him to the bridge, Chen had pressed the transfer coil chips Chekov had turned over to him back into his palm. The navigator wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. Was the return of the chips a proposal of a collaboration to implement the self-destruct of the _Nell _or a refusal to have anything to do with such a plan? Hard to say. He didn’t have a lot of relevant experience with the interrogator to judge from. Their interactions thus far had consisted primarily of shoving, accusations, and calling each other names…

“I remembered something,” Khwaja was saying, putting a solicitous arm around the ensign’s shoulders and ushering him to the navigator’s station. “Your little log entry from the future…”

Chekov blinked at the Orion. “My what?”

“When you first opened the treasure pod, you said that it triggered a message from the future you and the ship was blowing up around you,” the Orion prompted, pressing a control that brought a camera up from the console. “Brecht is not going to feel comfortable until every element that he found in that treasure pod is in place. So we’re going to make sure that the next time he looks, your message is there. A bit of smoke and mirrors…”

“Khwaja…” The ensign slowly shook his head. “… Or whatever your name truly is…”

“I hope you remember what you said,” the Orion warned, tapping in a series of commands to the communications console. “There’s no use screaming a warning or trying to put in some sort of code. I’ll just erase it and we’ll start over.”

“Your motivations may spring from a deep concern for historical calamity that befell the Orion civilization,” Chekov said. “However, Goudchaux does not share your principled concerns…”

Khwaja smiled as he crossed to the sensor controls. “I would never use “principled” in proximity to his name, no.”

“He is mad and evil and motivated only by a desire for personal profit and revenge,” the ensign retorted hotly. “He has murdered Ms. MacLauren and Miss Morgain and may be attempting to kill Mr. Chen even as we speak.”

The Orion made a dubious noise through his nose as he activated the flashing red alert lighting for the bridge. “He might not have a lot of luck with that.”

The navigator’s mouth dropped open in shock that this was the only comment the pirate drew from his statement. “Does it not concern you?”

“Here’s a great thing about time travel, kitten,” Khwaja asserted as he coaxed damage control to start dripping flakes of some sort of flame retardant foam from the ceiling panels. “Nothing is ever so done that it can’t be _un_done.”

“You’re as mad as he is,” Chekov concluded, using the Orion’s divided attention as an opportunity to insert his transfer chips into the navigation console to await the moment when Chen did the same with Sulu’s… that is, _if _Chen did the same…

“Ready for your close-up?” the Orion asked, coming to stand in front of the helm and pointing a disruptor at him.

“This is ridiculous!” the navigator protested.

Khwaja reached over the top of the console to activate the comm unit. “Chen,” he said into it. “Standby to execute the other Starfleet prisoner on my order.”

“Standing by,” came the crackling response.

“Not so ridiculous, hmm?” The Orion pressed a button on the helm that allowed the damage control alerts to begin to sound and gestured to the camera with the disruptor. “Convincingly, please.” 

Chekov looked into the tiny camera, his mind a complete blank. Stage fright gripped him entirely.

"Mr. Brecht...” he stammered after a moment. “Sulu— if only you could hear me…" He wracked his brains for a moment to remember the identity of the other person present before coming up with the obvious answer. "...And Chekov. Please, what you are about to do will have catastrophic results.”

If ever there was an understatement... 

Chekov looked down trying to think of some code that Khwaja wouldn’t recognize as code. He noticed that a red indicator had started a countdown.

“You must protect the timeline,” the ensign continued quickly, covering the indicator with his hand. “Do not attempt to bring the capsule aboard.”

So Chen had retrieved Sulu’s chips and had inserted them in the correct console in the engine room. The countdown to the _Nell’s_ self-destruct had begun.

“Summon assistance from Starfleet,” he said, steeling himself. The _Nell_ was an old vessel. The self-destruct was going to be…messy… “Please, leave. Quickly… While you have this chance."

It started a little more rapidly than he anticipated. A muffled explosion sounded somewhere down in the bowels of the small ship.

“What was that?” Khwaja asked, suddenly suspecting his staged disaster was taking on an element of realism.

"_Bozhe Moi_..." Chekov forced himself to look back at the camera and keep up the pretense until the end. "What was I going to say? I can only remember that I began to forget at this point. Oh, yes, …"

The Orion cut off the feed from the helm. “What have you done?” he demanded, pushing the navigator’s hands away from the indicators which were both clicking down to all zeros.

More dull booms echoed through the _Nell_ shaking the small ship from bow to stern. A jet of flame burst out of the ceiling and as quickly died down again. The soft hiss of nitrogen sounded in a moment of quiet.

Khwaja jerked the two incriminating chips from their slots. “I should kill you, kitten,” he growled, shaking them in the ensign’s face.

“That would be a bit redundant now,” the navigator concluded. “Would it not?”

There was a roaring sound behind them and both of them turned to watch as one of the bulkheads suddenly turned incandescent.

"Watch out!" Khwaja yelled. There was a roar of noise and a blast of hot air, and then the back bulkhead of bridge turned white and collapsed inwards with a sigh.

"Oh, no." Chekov determinedly turned his back on the fire that was about to engulf him, "It ends here."


	21. Chapter 21

Chekov opened his eyes, quite surprised to find himself alive and in one piece, sitting on the _Shonagon’s_ small transporter pad.

“So,” Stuart Brecht said, giving him a hand up. “I’m assuming things didn’t go to plan?”

“Sulu!” The ensign immediately pushed past the freebooter to get the helmsman’s side.

The lieutenant was seated behind the pilot’s position, which Scott was currently manning. The helmsman had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He looked dazed. Most disturbingly, there was a splatter of blood across his chest.

“I’m fine.” Sulu smiled weakly as the navigator knelt by his side. “I think…”

“We had trouble locating the two of you,” Jessie Alleyn scolded, administering a hypo full of something to the helmsman.

“When the energy build up indicating that the self-destruct had been activated began, the person at the engineering controls had the wrong body mass to be Sulu,” Brecht explained as he crossed to the navigator’s console.

“That was Chen,” Chekov informed them.

In the _Shonagon’s_ main viewscreen, the wreckage of the _Nell_ was still hurtling past in large glowing chunks. The navigator’s heart and nervous system hadn’t quite caught up with the fact that he wasn’t part of that wreckage.

“When I came to,” Sulu was saying, his voice still groggy and hesitating. “Chen was standing over me with a disruptor pointed at me. He also had my half of the transfer chips in his hand and was looking at them. Goudchaux came up behind him. I think he stabbed him… or tried to. They fought. There was blood everywhere. Chen ran out. Goudchaux went after him. I think the explosions started. I passed out and woke up here.”

Chekov took his hands and squeezed them like one might comfort a child waking up from a bad dream.

During the helmsman’s narrative, Alleyn had paused in re-loading a hypo presumably meant for Chekov and sat down in the seat behind the navigator’s to listen. “So Ricky and Goudchaux turned on each other in the end?” she asked, turning to watch the debris hitting the _Shonagon’s_ forward panels.

“Goudchaux had murdered Ms. MacLauren on the station before we made the jump back to the present,” Chekov informed her. “Chen was distraught about that fact and about Miss Morgain’s death.”

“Well, he would be,” Scott commented, turning away from his piloting for a moment.

Chekov hesitated for a moment, then blurted out, “Because she was his daughter?” It seemed strangely important to get these facts straight.

“Aye,” the engineer confirmed shortly.

There was an awkward silence. Sulu blinked at the ensign as if his stupidity was doing more to wake him up from his long cryogenic sleep than the shock of transporting off an exploding ship followed by a hypo full of stimulants.

“Ms. MacLauren tried to convince Miss Morgain that she was your child,” the navigator tried to explain/apologize… which only made things a bit worse.

The engineer finally made a dismissive noise through his nose. “Well, Esme was always a mixer.”

“She never wanted to share Ricky with anyone,” Alleyn agreed. After another silence she seemed to remember the hypo in her hands and applied it to the ensign’s arm.

“Miss Morgain certainly did not resemble him at all,” the navigator said, mostly to himself, now completely flustered.

“Oh, I thought she did.” Alleyn said, breaking out a scanner to take readings on both the ensign and the lieutenant after providing them both with a glass of whisky, which was apparently a standard part of her medical treatments.

“No, she was the picture of you, luv,” Scott contradicted from the helm. “That’s why I went to them in that damned bar in Bidoah. I thought it was you with ‘em. I went over thinking “What’s Jess got herself into this time?”

“Chen knew she was his daughter, but never revealed this to her?” Chekov asked, feeling light-headed from the stimulant.

Alleyn shrugged and nodded. “That would be like him. He could be a hard one to figure.”

Chekov put a hand over his mouth to make himself stop talking. It didn’t matter anymore, he told himself. The gears in his brain could stop trying to grind through the tangled lives of those four young people from Aberdeen that time and fate had decided to tie him to. Their affairs were once more none of his business. The reasons why Chen had chosen not to disclose to Moray Morgain that he was her father were probably the result of an accommodation a taciturn and non-demonstrative man had reached with his jealous and manipulative common law wife. It was not a mystery that had to be unraveled to preserve the balance of all time and space. Questions and answers be damned. They were all gone and there was nothing Chekov could do to save any of them now…

“Would you like another whisky, Peterson?” Jessie Alleyn was asking.

Sulu extended his blanket to cover the navigator’s shoulders. “That’s probably enough, Jessie,” the lieutenant said, returning their glasses to the madam. “If you’ve got some coffee made, though?”

“He did seem motivated to protect you Ms. Alleyn,” the ensign said, deciding to try one more explanation/apology. “When I informed him of the explosive in the treasure pod…”

“There’s a bomb in the treasure pod?” Brecht abruptly turned from the navigator’s position. “Oh, Lord…! Well, I might have figured. Khwaja did have a penchant for that sort of a twist…”

“He’s dead then?” Chekov leaned back against Sulu’s legs wearily. He knew it was true. However this was another area his mind where his mind was demanding clarity and closure.

“No life signs in the wreckage,” the freebooter confirmed as if he understood.

“I can see why you were against destroying the ship in this manner while we were in the past, Mr. Scott,” the navigator said as a particularly large bit of fiery metal flew past the _Shonagon’s_ nose. “Lots of debris.”

Brecht turned his seat around to face the ensign. He rested his forearms on his knees and blew out a long slow breath.

“I’m sorry Khwaja had to go like this too, Admiral,” he confessed. “He was…” The freebooter seemed to consider a long list of things and then said none of them. “… very good at he what he did.”

“And not entirely wrong about the negative impact we had on Orion’s history,” the navigator pointed out stubbornly.

“You were there,” Brecht countered. “You saw Orion history with your own eyes. Yes, there were peaceful, incredibly wealthy planets. But there were also the aggressive expansionists like Budrin poised to move on them. The Orlan Du robberies put blood in the water that got the sharks moving. But the sharks were already there. Khwaja would have been able to change things, yes, but, I doubt he would have been able to create the kind of utopia he envisioned. It’s more likely he would have created a host of monsters for every one he thought he was striking down. It's best not to interfere with the established flow of the timeline... just as you've been insisting.”

"Yes." Chekov felt the sharp stab of having pronounced a judgement on himself in advance for a crime he never thought he'd consider committing. "Just as I have said." 

“So what now?” Sulu asked, still yawning and glassy-eyed despite having drunk a half-cup of coffee.

“Well…” Brecht pulled himself up to a straighter position and shook his head as if that would better clear his thinking. “I think it’s time we pull you fellows out of this loop and call in some specialists to clear up this debris field and defuse that bomb.”

“Specialists?” Scott repeated dubiously.

“Isn’t it time for you tell us who you actually are, Mr. Brecht?” Chekov demanded.

“Oh, no, Admiral.” Brecht chuckled as he accepted a glass of whisky from Alleyn. “That’s not a good idea at all. Because unless I’m very mistaken, it’s going to turn out that I don’t exist and none of this has happened.”

“Oh, really?” Scott turned to him. “Then how are we to explain where we’ve been for…?”

The engineer broke off as he attempted to do a quick mental calculation of how long they’d been absent without leave. The fact that their time in Orion’s past did not add up to time passing in their current present made such a reckoning challenging, though.

“I’ve lost track of it myself,” Brecht commiserated with a laugh. “Well, the best lie sticks closest to the truth, so I think you’re going to be advised to say that you met up with some old acquaintances who took you two for a cruise. They had problems with their ship and left you stranded deep in Orion territory. Mr. Sulu here was able to find you, but unfortunately, his lovely ship was hijacked by that well-known scoundrel Stuart Brecht. You did finally meet with a little luck, though, when you were able to make contact with old friend, Jessie Alleyn, who was able to forward you enough funds to make reservations for a quiet shuttle ride back to Starbase 23.”

Chekov raised an eyebrow at this not entirely spontaneous sounding plan. “Why, thank you, Ms. Alleyn.”

“Think nothing of it, Peterson.” The madam grinned. She took a perch on the helm between Scott and Brecht. “It’s Uncle Stuie who’s footing the bill.”

“So, you will return to Quondar?”

“No, I’m throwing in with his lot.” Alleyn nodded towards Brecht. “Going to give it a try anyway.”

“Yes.” The freebooter/Intelligence Agent gave the madam’s knee a fraternal pat. “I want to see what a little training can do for her. Either she’s going to turn out to be the most brilliant tactician we’ve ever had, or she’ll drive all our strategy experts out of their minds. Either way, I can’t wait to watch.”

Alleyn reached out with one finger to stroke Scott’s cheek. “The thought doesn’t bother you, does it, luv?”

The engineer was silent for a moment, then blew out a long breath. “I suppose I’d rather think of you with his lot than back on Quondar.”

Chekov still did not understand their relationship, but it made better sense to him than it did at first. Jessie Alleyn, as Esme had said, was like a cat. Mr. Scott loved her but seemed to understand that she belonged not to him, but only to herself.

Sulu yawned loudly. “What about the treasure?” he asked, as if it were taking a great effort for him to remain awake.

“It will be returned to the Orions,” Brecht assured him. “Not in one lump, of course. That would raise too many questions. But expect a wave of truly remarkable archaeological finds coming in the next few years.”

The helmsman laughed drowsily. “A time machine will come in handy there.”

“Oh, you betcha,” the freebooter confirmed. “And some spectacular raids on the black market in Orion antiquities… and private collectors coming forward with some jaw-dropping pieces they just happened to find in the attic. Along with the return of the treasure there will be the gradual, but complete debunking of the myth of the fabled Orlan Du.”

Despite the critical importance of what they were discussing, exhaustion was setting in and the ensign was finding it hard to keep his eyes open. “Now that we know the truth,” he commented cynically.

“…Which, you have to admit, Admiral, is fairly unbelievable,” Brecht responded. “Taken as mythology, the Orlan Du cycle was always a fairly silly collection of tales. Tended to stir up bad feelings between the clans. Was full of embarrassing anti-Human propaganda that would get pulled out when trade deals started to go bad. And we definitely don’t want to talk about the porn, do we?”

“No,” Sulu murmured sleepily curling against Chekov and closing his eyes. “Absolutely not.”

Even Scott had started yawning now. “And what about your blasted time machine?”

“Oh, definitely don’t give this thing a second thought,” Brecht said, giving the device which was stowed beneath his seat, a pat. “It won’t be going back to Aberdeen, that’s damned certain.”

“Not so much the last place on Earth anybody would think to look for such a thing as you thought, eh?” Scott asked, as Jessie Alleyn removed an empty whisky glass from the helm.

“Not so much,” Brecht admitted ruefully.

Chekov thought the engineer sounded rather tired too. Perhaps, he thought as he leaned against Sulu’s thigh and closed his weary eyes; Mr. Scott should take a break from piloting and take a nap too.

“Isn’t it about time…” The ensign could hear Scott yawning. “… to call in your specialists, Brecht?”

The last thing Chekov heard before the sedative Jessie Alleyn had spiked his whisky with took hold completely was Stuart Brecht calmly announcing, “I already did.”

* * *

They spent the next four days in an extremely secure location. Although the three _Enterprise_ officers were each held in isolation for the entire time, when they compared notes afterwards, their experiences were identical. They were debriefed thoroughly and given medical attention by personal who properly identified themselves as Starfleet Intelligence officers. However neither Brecht nor Khwaja’s identities as operatives was ever acknowledged by anyone who spoke to them at any point.

At the end of their stay, each was informed that the decision had been reached that no charges were to be brought against him and, as Brecht had predicted, the entire affair was highly classified. They were to go forward with the cover story he had outlined and never mention any of the proceedings again, unless they wanted to be brought up for court-martial.

* * *

"Chekov?"

The ensign surfaced out of a sweet dream about Britta. She was being very, very nice to him in a way that she would probably never be again if she ever discovered that he was responsible for Starfleet Intelligence draining away all the profits Khwaja had funneled in her direction.

"Chekov?"

He opened his eyes and closed them again. There was something very strange about the lights, and the atmosphere. The atmosphere particularly had a most peculiar quality to it. It was so fresh and... and salty?

"I know you're awake."

He rolled over and focused on Sulu, and beyond him, on a terrace with a stone balustrade, a fountain, and curtains that fluttered in a breeze. He identified a background murmur as being surf, not engines. "Where...?"

"Nesta Four.”

The planet was a non-aligned 'resort' world on the Orion Federation border. 'Resort' in this case most specifically meaning 'lacking extradition treaties with either side.'

Chekov blinked at the obviously expensive fittings within his limited field of vision. "When...?"

“Our shuttle leaves this afternoon.”

He stared at the ceiling as if aligning himself to a field of invisible stars. “That makes it three days since our other selves left for the Orion past.”

Sulu was dressed in a very sensible teal and tan outfit — the perfect choice for a level-headed Starfleet officer returning from a leave that definitely did not involve pirates and double agents and robbery and time travel and selling drugs to children and murder. 

“You’ve got to stop thinking that way,” the lieutenant advised the ensign.

“I must stop _saying _such things this afternoon,” the navigator corrected his colleague. “It may take some time before I can stop _thinking_ them.”

“I know what you mean, but…” Sulu relented with a sigh and came over and sat on the side of the bed. “It is a wild thought, isn’t it? A version of you and me stuck on an endless loop travelling three thousand years backwards…”

The navigator closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his face. “Sickening.”

“Would be worse if you had to consciously experience it over and over again.”

The ensign lowered his arms enough to frown at the helmsman.

This comment revealed an area where Chekov and Sulu were completely incompatible. The lieutenant was of an irrepressibly optimistic nature. This led him to the strange belief that pointing out the ways a particular situation might be worse could somehow improve a person’s outlook.

“Yes,” the Russian replied in the same manner that if he had been American would have translated to “so what?” “That would be much worse.”

Since he was not American, Sulu didn’t get that translation and was fooled into believing he’d done a little good. “So try not to think about it that way,” he said, giving his friend’s leg a comforting pat.

Chekov put the pillow over his head, not feeling ready for sunlight yet. “So many unanswered questions...”

“You’re not still on that paranoid kick about Brecht being a double agent for the Orions, are you?”

“In the end, we do not know who he was, or what his true allegiances may have...” he began with some vigor, knowing that this would be the last day he’d have to air his theories.

“Pavel.” Sulu gently lifted the pillow and set it aside. “It’s natural for you to have mixed feelings about Khwaja’s death. He was really the one who was the biggest question mark for us in the end.”

The very sound of the Orion’s name hit the ensign in the chest like a blow.

“In those last moments…” The ensign frowned as he raised himself up on his elbows. The lieutenant’s statement got to the heart of part of what was bothering him about the Orion’s death — he wasn’t sure why his feelings about it weren’t more straight-forward. “He said he wished to kill me and then he also cried out to warn me… Throughout this time, he was frequently cruel to me. He was blackmailing me. He allowed others to be abusive to me and yet prevented Goudchaux from killing me outright on several occasions… And in the end, he died and I did not.”

“If what he said was true,” Sulu said evenly. “You were his assignment. He was there to psychologically manipulate you. He regarded you as an asset he could exploit to his advantage… and I think, on some level, he became genuinely fond of you.” After an awkward moment of silence the lieutenant continued, “He lost sight of his mission, went rogue, and became a threat to the very existence of the Federation. You did what you were under direct orders to do.”

“I know,” the ensign said quietly. “And yet, somehow I do not completely understand …and probably never will… and after this afternoon I am never allowed to mention it again with another soul.”

“Well…” Sulu rose and crossed to the replicator by the bed. “We made that agreement to preserve military secrets, right?”

“Yes,” the navigator agreed as his helm-partner punched in an order.

“But, if our mental health is in jeopardy,” the helmsman said, returning to the bed with two cold glasses of vodka and the rest of the bottle. “I think the two of us can have some drinks in private — keeping the use of names and places and events to a minimum —and stay within the spirit of the agreement, can’t we?”

The navigator couldn’t help smiling, thinking of another Starfleet officer who tended towards a broad interpretation of Starfleet directives where the health and safety of his officers are concerned.

“You are very like Captain Kirk at times, Lieutenant,” he complimented his fellow officer, raising a glass to him.

“Thank you, Ensign,” Sulu said, returning the gesture.

“And a very good friend at _all_ times, Hikaru,” he added warmly.

“Thank you, Pavel.”

As the cold vodka slipped deliciously down his throat, it reminded him that despite all he had been through, he was still in possession of trust, honor, and friendship; qualities that been alien to so many of the travelers he had encountered on this sad journey. It made him think of a poem he’d memorized as a boy. Since it seemed apt to the moment, he decided to quote it.

“_Tis time, my friend, ‘tis time!_  
_For rest the heart is aching;_  
_Days follow days in flight, and every day is taking_  
_Fragments of being, while together you and I_  
_Make plans to live._”

“That’s profound.” Sulu smiled as he re-filled his glass. “What’s it from?”

“It’s Pushkin,” Chekov replied. “It’s not Scottish, but we try.”

** END **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, dear reader, thank you for coming along for what feels like a very long voyage.
> 
> As I promised in the opening notes for this story, here is a link to the original version if you would like to compare
> 
> [ http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~skazki/story3.htm](http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~skazki/story3.htm)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(Fanart) Kidnapped](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20111182) by [Mylochka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mylochka/pseuds/Mylochka)


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